<Begin Segment 26>

PW: What about you personally?

RO: So then, yeah, because I was involved with clay and so on, and because, enough that I wanted to sponsor Clay Day, I had some students then that were very, very, had gotten to the point where they were very efficient. And I had this one student who had then graduated, and I had hired him to come back and take care of the ceramics department, and he would clean up after and so on, he would also act as an assistant. So then he and I, then, started going to workshops all through the state of California. And we'd run into workshops that were done by the major entrepreneurs in clay in California today.

PW: So, for example, where?

RO: Oh, we would go to San Francisco, we would go to Big Creek. Big Creek was a pottery, and what they did was it was a pottery that you could apply to, and you could go there and you'd have this residency there. And you had a place to stay, and you pay for food, and then you have a place where you work, this large area. And so you got to this large communal area of people that were involved in clay. And so it was done by applications, and they pick and choose people. And so then they had instructors or guest potters who would come there to be able to go and teach the class, or to go and talk about their own work. And we had, for instance, Michael Cardew. Michael Cardew is from England, and he was one of the principal potters of that period. If you think about Bernard Shaw, who else was doing... oh, the influenced of Shoji Hamada to then, especially in England and so on, and so he was one of the people that was working there, too, he had a pottery, and he was then the guest who came to the United States and then gave this workshop. And he also spent time in Africa running a workshop and then developing an idea of using clay for making pots and so on, teaching the people there. So then it was wonderful to have these very, very important people that were instrumental in moving clay forward in the world.

PW: What did you love so much about the clay? It seems like a big change, but maybe not.

RO: No. Once you get... with painting, it's very different. And once you work with clay, it's a real transition, and because it's something that you do, your mindset is very different. Your mindset is very different in the fact that then how you take something that is three-dimensional, whereas with painting, you're working basically two-dimensionally. And so you have this three-dimensional material that you can squeeze and mold and whatever, then I think that every child making mud pies has had that kind of natural instinct to this three dimensional material. So now all of a sudden you're doing this thing, and you're starting to understand what other people were doing, and they were fantastic things in clay. So then you wanted to be a part of that because it was really hot, really hot. And the universities and clay departments in San Jose and Fullerton and so on were just really producing a lot of wonderful potters. As compared to today, it's gone down, but it's coming back again, too.

PW: You just mentioned Hamada as one of the ceramicists or potters that were having influence, and it's the first time that you've mentioned a Japanese, this is a Japanese national, right?

RO: Right.

PW: Japanese national artist that was impacted in this world that you're very, it's constant now. What did that mean to you to have this Japanese potter coming in?

RO: Yes, it was the beginning of a lot of things. So I would continue to do these workshops, and so then I would go down to Idlewild, which is east of Los Angeles, and there's this art complex. And they would invite people in different areas of expertise. One summer they invited the people from the, Navajo people and so on, to give workshops in these small, traditional, what's the name... the woman who did these beautiful, smoked pieces, Native American pieces with these graphic designs. And so they would give workshops, and then they had a workshop with a man who was, an American young man who lived in New Jersey, but he had studied in Japan for about ten years, and he knew a lot of people, and they invited him to come out, and then to help them with the traditional anagama. The traditional anagama is a kind of kiln that the potters from Japan, ever since the eleventh and twelfth centuries, they would basically take a hillside, and they would burrow a hill at the lower part, and they would dig it in, dig a hole in all the way as deep as they can, and then there would be a hole at the top of this mound. They would crawl in there with these pots, and they would build a fire at the front, the mouth of this hole, and of course, the angle and so on would cause the flames and the ashes that flow through and exit out. So then you have places like Bizen, Shigaraki, places like this in Japan that are, still today, well-known for their traditional kilns of that period, modified over a period of time. So then he helped design, and we helped build the kiln at Idlewild. And so this was the first time we fired a wood burning kiln, because they were a rare existence in the United States. There were some on the East Coast, some, I think, in the upper West Coast, but there were very, very few wood burning kilns.

So here was this experience you have of making where you don't put any glaze on it, you crawl in there and then the person who loads the kiln, then knows about what happens with the clay as a result of this period of firing. You're firing the thing for four days straight, and you don't let up at all, you work in ten hours shifts, you're having to go ahead and split wood, or you're the person who is then watching this stack, the chimney to see how much smoke is coming out, and then when you should stoke the chamber. You're watching the glow of the inside of the chamber because it changes. They start to go from red and dull red and orange and eventually yellow, and you're looking for this, but then you have these pyrometric cones that are in there that tell you what the temperature where they start to bend. So you're looking along the side of this chamber to a spot where these things were located to determine if the temperature is even throughout the chamber itself. And after firing and so on, and then when it reaches that, then it cools down, you just mud up the openings, so there's no air that gets in there, then it cools for another three, four days. They eventually crack it open and the person crawls in there and pulls out these pieces. And the premise in wood-burning kilns is the fact that when wood burns -- and it depends on the kind of wood that you have -- what happens is that the direction of the air starts to deposit ash on the pots that are sitting there. So it hits this and the ash starts to collect, and as you're reaching higher and higher temperatures, the ash turns to a glaze. It liquefies and it starts to run down.

And this is treasured in Japan. This is an ideal thing that you want, and so any person who worked in wood burning kilns knows that the traditional Japanese, whether it be in Shigaraki or Bizen, or the major places, know that the characteristics of pots that have this accidental quality or the effect of fire and so on, prizes them, what happens into the work that's collected. So in Shigaraki, that used to be part of the tea tray, so all their pots would be, containers for people who then bought tea, and they were known for that. And they would use a different kind of clay. As a result then, one of the people that came and taught class was a man by the name of Shiro Otani. Shiro Otani, of the prefecture of Shigaraki, There's a designation given to creative people in Japan through the country as well as in different parts, and he was given this as the... I can't remember the designation called, it's like the Nobel prize for a potter, particular areas as well as in Japan, so it might be for a woodworker, it might be for someone who does weavings, it might be someone who does calligraphy and so on, but then he came...

PW: National treasure.

RO: National treasure, that's what it's called. So as a result then, we befriended each other, and in fact, I had a VW bus at the time. This was my major transportation. So then a whole bunch of kids from Idlewild said hey, and Shiro was, said he'd liked to go to Mexico. So we all jumped in a bus, we drove down to Tijuana, and we went and visited the museum there in Tijuana and did a little bit of touring. Jumped back in there and came back, and so we became very, very good friends. And so then we were going to Japan because of my, we're doing some research with my daughter, and then Shiro found out that we were going to be in Japan, I think, through the people that we were with. And so then we got this telegram or something saying that Otani was going to go ahead, and he was in Shigaraki, but then he was a ways away. So we then found the way, you take these small trains to go there and be able to stay with him. So we stayed with him for a day.

PW: And this was the '70s maybe?

RO: Yeah it was in the '90s, yeah.

PW: So the ceramics lasted...

RO: Lasted about, yeah, more than a decade, almost eleven or twelve years, very, very important.

PW: Then that trip, when you did go in the '90s, was it the first time you went to Japan?

RO: It was for me. Sandy had been there before. She'd been there on a Fulbright. So yeah, she's been to Japan more than I have. [Laughs]

<End Segment 26> - Copyright © 2023 Densho. All Rights Reserved.