Yesterday I received an email from a potter Emily who lives in Japan and teaches on an Air Force Base, asking for some advice.  She is a “student turned teacher” and wanted some

Colleen and I getting ready for Tea Ceremony

resources to learn more about ceramics.  As I was thinking where I could direct her for information, I started remembering when I went to Japan to study ceramics.  It was 1987, and I was accepted to the International Workshop of Ceramic Art in Tokoname (IWCAT). 

I googled IWCAT to see what came up.  What a blast from the past, they have pictures posted from 1987, and I suddenly saw my young, naive face with a bad haircut staring back at me!!!  What a shock, I wasn’t expecting that at all.  I keep thinking about my time studying ceramics in Japan.  If anyone reading this has ever had the dream of going to Japan to study cramics IWCAT is the program for you.  It is one of the finest memories I have, I loved Tokoname, the people I met, the potters, and

Yep, this is me: Raku Japanese style

best of all learning about Japan and its culture.  I run down stairs and start looking for pictures.  I can’t find many pictures; I start to panic, what happened to all those rolls of film, I’m frantically looking through old pictures.  Then it dawns on me, how much technology has changed, and the way we take and show pictures, back in the day, the way to share pictures with friends was with slides.  Most of the pictures I have from Japan are slides.  I don’t have a way to transfer my slides to digital images, but I found a few pics to scan. 

My time in Tokoname was so action packed,  we did raku, fired a nobrigama, anagama, participated in a traditional tea ceremony, visited archeologist excavating an ancient kiln, had Japanese children teach us calligraphy, we did so much, it was such an amazing time.  I could go on and on.  Emily, thank you so much for your question, it sent me down memory lane. 

The National Treasure

The National Treasure's hand.

In his studio.