I hope to refine these coffee cups to a much higher level while I am here and would like for them to be one of the things that I take home with me from Japan.  This is another funny surprise.  I would have never thought that life in Japan would make me passionate about the coffee cup as a form.

I got the chance to make 25 cups as a small gift for the people who attended a performance that the owner of my studio, Miki-san, has every year.  These were some of the first items that I have fired in Japan so this was quite exciting for me.  I have started using a red clay kind of by accident but have become really addicted to it.  

 

Miki-san has a friend who got her started on ceramics years ago and he was visiting our studio so she asked if I would like to throw for him so he could see how I worked.  I said I would like to so they gave me some clay.  I got busy using it and really liked the texture and its feel.  I asked Koji one of my studio mates if I could buy the rest of the bag and he said yes.  I had no idea what color it would fire to but have been really happy with the results that I have been getting.      

As I was working on my 25 cups I found myself thinking that the coffee cup has an iconic American vibe and wondered why I had never really taken much interest in it.  I have had a love affair with coffee in the past 10 years but just haven’t really made many coffee cups.  Living in Japan and being surrounded by so much tradition made me happy to be making a really familiar form because every piece of ceramics has a specific purpose.  Most people wouldn’t use a rice bowl for soup or a tea cup for juice here.  This has made making things more complicated because each item has its shape and aesthetic already defined in many ways.

 

Miki-san uses a nice white slip and cuts designs into it.  I thought this would look nice so I put a splash of slip on the side of each cup and added my own decoration.  The best part about this decoration method is that I suck at drawing so my drawings look really childish and raw.  I like them a lot.  I have been putting images from my daily life that come to mind on them.  I then put a coat of clear on them and because of the iron in the red clay they come out a nice subtle green.

The event was really great.  For me the coffee cups that we gave away gave this event an empty bowls vibe.  I always loved doing empty bowls.   The performance itself was a nice mix of spoken word and music.  All the people in the performance were long time friends and family that have been doing this event together for the last 15 years so there was a really nice mix of young and old and a really mellow yet highly polished vibe to the event.  I didn’t understand what was being said but I got a really good feeling anyway and it seemed like everyone else did as well.