There is life in pottery beyond the gas kiln and the white china coffee mug.
Pottery began in open fires. The Berkshires shelter potent forms of this art. Interlaken Art School in Stockbridge teaches Raku firing. Michael Marcus of Monterey fires his pottery in several thousand cubic feet of flame. Marcus has developed two businesses, or two art forms, side by side: Joyous Spring Pottery, and Bizen Japanese Restaurant and Sushi bar.
Marcus practices the 1,000-year-old art of yaki-shime, unglazed stoneware pottery colored by fire. Yaki-shima pottery is fired in the Bizen Nobori Gama, a multichambered climbing kiln, 43 feet long, eight feet wide, beneath its own shed. It was named, like Marcus’ restaurant, for the Bizen province of Japan, where it was born. Marcus’ Bizen Nabori Gama fires 1,500 pieces, once a year.
In Japan, he said, yaki-shima pottery appears on tables and in tea ceremonies, and holds ikebana, flower arrangements. Marcus serves his customers on his own bowls and platters. He displays urns three feet tall, and sets flowers in his own hanging vases.
The watertight nonporous stoneware is mottled rust, russet, black and silver.
wood ash liquefies into a natural glaze. Marcus wraps some pots in rice straw that burns away, leaving dark fire mark patterns. He buries other pieces in embers for a roughened surface, or shovels charcoal over them. He uses 15 different firing techniques, he said. “The firing process is so monumental ... †it unleashes such vast forces of nature. There is only so much room for experimenting with a raging inferno.
The Bizen Nobori Gama is made of 10,000 firebrick and reaches temperatures over 2,300 degrees Fahrenheit. It is fired continuously for 10 days, heated by hardwood. Marcus said he goes through 10 to 12 cords of wood at a firing. Afterward, the kiln takes a week to cool and a week to unload.
Marcus has been a full-time potter since 1971. He studied wood-fired pottery four years in Japan. “They didn’t teach you much,†he said; he watched and worked. “It was a total immersion in the Japanese culture.†He spent time with kiln builders and potters both. When he had served this apprenticeship, he came to the Berkshires, and began to build his own kiln in 1981. He first fired it in 1984. He opened Bizen in 1986.
The restaurant came about through the Japanese connection between pottery and food, Marcus said; the Japanese traditionally believed that the taste of food was in the pottery. Presentation was a part of the experience of eating. “To put beautiful food in pottery changes the whole nature of the cuisine ... it would be like eating from a Van Gogh painting,†he said. Sushi is arranged so beautifully; the experience is exponentially more powerful when it is arranged on a beautiful serving dish.
Bizen is 90 percent organic. Marcus uses high quality fish and sake, and makes unusual sushi rolls, for example lobster, crab, and scallops. The restaurant is developed around the tea ceremony, Marcus said. It — the room, the wood beams, the furniture — is made from natural materials. Along one wall there are Tatami rooms with real mats. As with his pottery, he decoration is minimal. In Japanese tradition, he said, fine dining is about enjoying food and company.
Raku, Markus added, was developed in Japan in the 16th century, to produce black tea bowls for the tea ceremony. Raku pieces are porous and glazed.
Like Interlaken in Stockbridge, a pottery in upstate New York holds a Raku firing every August. The outdoor kilns look like upside down, insulated wire waste baskets. They sit on brick bases. Flames shoot from holes in the top, invisible during the day, but enough to burn the eyelashes off of anyone who leans to close to peer in. The potter lifts the kiln top off the bricks, and lifts out red hot pots with a pair of tongs. Their glaze is liquid. They look like molten glass.
The potter plunges pots and bowls into metal bins of sawdust or newspaper shavings and puts lids over them. The shavings burn quickly and oxidize the glaze. Raku pieces have a brittle, iridescent sheen. Some glazes crackle into long, fine lines. Some turn copper, electric blue, green, pink, colors out of insect wings and oil slicks. Unglazed clay will come out black.
The potter takes a partly cooled bowl out of the sawdust, maybe a half an hour after it went in, and sluices it in water. If the inner and outer surfaces are wetted at the same time, and the heat kept even, the bowl will not crack. The process is too stressful for large pieces.
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Winter Storm Warning Issued for Berkshires
Another snowstorm is expected to move through the region overnight on Friday, bringing 5 to 8 inches of snow. This is updated from Thursday's winter weather advisory.
The National Weather Service in Albany, N.Y., has posted a winter storm warning for all of Berkshire County and parts of eastern New York State beginning Friday at 4 p.m. through Saturday at 1 p.m.
The region could see heavy to moderate snowfall rates of 1 to 2 inches per hour overnight, tapering off Saturday morning to flurries.
Drivers should exercise caution on Friday night and Saturday morning, as travel conditions may be hazardous.
Saturday night should be clear and calm, but warming temperatures means freezing rain Sunday night and rain through Monday with highs in the 40s. The forecast isn't much better through the week as temperatures dip back into the teens with New Year's Eve looking cloudy and frigid.
Many homeowners are showing their holiday spirit by decorating their houses. We asked for submissions so those in the community can check out these fanciful lights and decor when they're out.
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