A Tale of Two Potters: Kikuchi Kazuyoshi and Willi Singleton.

(From Journal of Japanese Trade & Industry (JJTI))

Byline: Jacqueline Ruyak

My real education in ceramics began while I was living in Kyoto. As an undergraduate in the United States, I had acquired an assortment of sturdy bowls, dishes and such from potter friends and salivated over Chinese porcelains in museum collections. But it all came together in Kyoto, where for seven years I lived in the ward famed for producing Kiyomizu-yaki (ware), the elegant, highly-colored porcelain often used with Kyoto cuisine. By then the old wood-burning kilns had been banished to the outskirts of the city, but many of the potters and decorators still worked in the neighborhood.

Each August a week-long pottery festival overflowed Gojo Avenue, known for its many shops selling Kiyomizu-ware. A minute from my house, the Kawai Kanjiro Museum showcased the beautiful home and kiln, and of course the work of Kawai Kanjiro, one of the pioneers of Japan's mingei (folk craft) movement. A downtown shop featured folk pottery from around the country. Tanba, or Tachikui (Hyogo Prefecture) and Shigaraki (Shiga Prefecture), among Japan's oldest and most famed pottery centers, were a day-trip away, and others were within easy reach. Much of my appreciation for ceramics came, however, through everyday exposure to Kyoto's famed cuisine and the tea ceremony. Though I studied neither, both permeate the social and cultural milieu of Kyoto and both have an intrinsic relation with Japanese ceramics.

Years later, after moving to Tono, Iwate Prefecture, I earned insight into the workaday worlds of two independent potters who, by great luck for me, live in my two backyards. One, Kikuchi Kazuyoshi, is from Tono, the other, Willi Singleton, from my native Pennsylvania. Both live and work in places which, though rich in natural beauty, are not known for pottery. For both potters, however, their work has an intimate connection to their environment. Born in Tono, Kikuchi got a job in Tokyo after leaving high school, with the idea of attending university. Along the way, however, he decided to learn a Japanese traditional craft. Sheer chance took him to a six-year apprenticeship with Onimaru Setsuzan of Takatori, a Kyushu kiln known for its tea ceremony ware. When Kikuchi left, at 28, he returned to Tono to set up his own kiln. After several years of using a gas kiln and making glazed pieces, he decided to go in a different direction, using a wood-fired kiln and making yaki-shime, the unglazed ware that typifies much of Japanese traditional pottery. To do that he moved into a hilltop thatched farmhouse in nearby Miyamori and there built a single-chamber anagama kiln, 20 meters long, which takes a week of near-constant stoking to fire. Though Kikuchi still maintains a gas kiln in Tono, his yakishime-ware is now his main work. Willi Singleton, who studied art and ceramics in college, went to Japan in 1981 and apprenticed for a year with Ichino Shigeyoshi in Tanba Tachikui. Somewhat daunted, he left to hone his Japanese language skills, then went again to Japan in 1985 to study with Narui Tappo in Mashiko, Tochigi Prefecture. In 1987, he returned to eastern Pennsylvania to set up a pottery at the frame farmhouse that was once a summer home for his grandparents. Singleton uses glazes and wood-fires his work in a four-chambered noborigama (climbing kiln), which he built behind his home. Located at the foot of Hawk Mountain, a world-famous center for raptor research, Pine Creek Pottery is now making a name for itself. Both potters believe their work is very much a product of place. Take the clay each uses. For Kikuchi that is a coarse red clay which he digs himself at ...