Entoten’s craft pop-up at The Den on Laurel Street over Labor Day weekend was a huge success! Thank you for taking the time to come and meet Kazu and to support his work. For those of you who couldn’t make it, here are some photos of the event, taken by our friend Tomoko Matsubayashi.
I hope to organize another pop-up event at the Den this December, so look forward to seeing you then.
Thank you for participating in our Mingei Museum fundraiser by purchasing our special edition tea whisk by Tanimura Tango, and also by visiting, liking, and sharing my post.
Today, Entoten was able to donate $1150 to the museum.
Here are some beautiful photos taken by photographer Tomoko Matsubayashi at the pre-opening event of the museum, which I hope you’ll enjoy browsing.
If you ever have the opportunity, please come to San Diego!
Mingei International Museum reopens September 3, 2021.
Admission will be free September 3-6.
Mingei Museum Fundraiser Tea Whisks by Tanimura Tango in our shop ->
Museums play a major role in defining a city, and as I await the reopening of the Mingei International Museum on September 3rd, 2021, I have never been as excited for San Diego as I am now.
The reason for my anticipation is because I dream of San Diego becoming a city where people deeply appreciate the social and spiritual significance of craft, and with the fresh energy of the revitalized Mingei Museum, it will become a destination for people in search of design and craft inspirations. I would also like to believe that it is no coincidence that I live in a city where the only Mingei museum outside of Japan is located.
The Mingei International’s management, headed by director Rob Sidner and aided by architect Jennifer Luce, designed the new museum with an open ground floor. It is intended to become a “living room” for Balboa Park where representative objects from the collection will always be on view, free of charge, for anyone to experience craft from many cultures. The space will also be equipped with a café, bistro, and shop: Becoming a museum that serves as a place for people to gather, eat, and drink or to simply be.
Featuring careful use of materials and excellent craftsmanship within the fabric of its design, the newly renovated museum will be an important addition to our local community and cultural identity. But the cost to pay for this grand transformation has yet to be fully funded, so, as an expression of community support for the museum, I asked 20th generation master tea whisk maker, Tanimura Tango in Nara, Japan, to create limited-edition tea whisks (chasen) in the color scheme of Mingei International Museum to organize a modest fundraiser.
Tanimura Tango’s tea whisk is one of the articles that the Mingei International Museum added to its collection in 2020. His shin-kazuho chasen was also included in the Mingei time capsule this January, together with select Museum publications and other undisclosed objects to commemorate the occasion. This makes his work the perfect symbol for this fundraiser.
To me, the tea whisk is an allegory for craft that connects us to people across history -over 500 years- and cultures whose collective labor has given it form. In a world that places so much value on speed and immediacy, it is also a powerful reminder that we should strive to build a culture that does not easily forget.
Please help me raise $1000 to donate to the museum that will include all the proceeds from the sale of these limited-edition tea whisks. The whisks are made of white bamboo in shin-kazuho style, a tried and tested design that is highly durable while creating fine foam on top of your matcha when used. It is the same style that is used by the grandmaster of the largest tea school in Japan.
Lastly, thank you very much for your support for my fundraiser. I hope that this blog post will entice you to include San Diego in the list of places that you will visit in the future.
Mingei International Museum reopens over Labor Day weekend
Free admission, September 3rd – 6th
For more information or to donate directly to the museum, please visit their website
Ceramics by Mitch Iburg in our shop ->
Minnesota-based potter Mitch Iburg’s latest collection of work is quiet, with simple forms and surfaces. The work reminded me of the unglazed and mostly undecorated Yayoi period pottery in Japan’s ancient history, an era generally accepted to be between 300 BCE and 300 CE. When I told him this, Mitch reminisced about the time we first connected in 2014 and said, “[back then] my interest was more in the very aggressive and bold wood fire surfaces.”
I enjoy looking at Yayoi pottery. Whenever I visit Tokyo’s National Museum, I’m one of the few visitors pottering around in the dark and deserted first floor of the museum’s Heiseikan wing where there is a chronologically arranged exhibition of Japanese archeology. I have often wondered what caused the drastic change in the style of pottery from Jomon (14000-300 BCE), which was highly decorated with ostentatious forms, to Yayoi that is very minimal and often with no decorations.
“After firing in mostly electric kilns for a few years I get much more joy from the simple qualities of the natural clay,” Mitch explained. “Much of the historical work I find myself drawn to these days has a similar quality.” The Minneapolis Institute of Art has a collection of Chinese Han dynasty vessels, Korean Silla ware, African vessels, and several works from the Jomon and Yayoi periods, and Mitch says he discovers something new from them every time he visits the museum.
After learning what inspires Mitch, I realized that the draw of Mitch’s work and Yayoi pottery is the unspoken respect for the character of the surface. Mitch evolved to prefer the natural beauty of the exterior without obscuring it with ash, and perhaps the Yayoi people grew to enjoy the clay surface without decorations. Regardless of the era and background, people can identify simple, unpretentious beauty. And we can all share our fascination for the Earth and its history.
Glass by Ishida Tami in our shop ->
When I walk my dog before sunrise in San Diego’s Mission Bay, the sky along the Pacific coast sometimes displays spectacular bands of colors. When that happens, I take a picture and send it to the glass artist Ishida Tami because I think of her work.
“The beauty of what nature creates is unrivaled and there is no way to even imitate it. But I want my work to stir the imagination in people,” Tami explained about what motivates her. Tami creates blown glass with layers of powdered glass coatings that are cut and intensely polished on the surface, a unique technique that she developed while studying the works of ancient Sasanian glassmakers.
Combining colors is the most difficult aspect in creating her work and Tami readily admits that she often makes mistakes. “Glass can be opaque, translucent, transparent, and the sizes of glass powder and their melting speeds and manufacturers can vary,” Tami said in summarizing the complex process and infinite combinations that are possible.
For example, Tami used three different types of black glass in four different grain sizes in the latest batch of work that she made for Entoten. “Black goes well with vivid colors so I used black many times in this batch of work,” she said. “I’m happy that delicate expressions of layers can be achieved with them.”
Tami has recently been finding inspirations for colors and layers of glass in natural stones, like agates with patterns on the cut surface. And while researching agates, she stumbled upon “The Writing of Stones,” a book by the late French intellectual Roger Caillois. “I thought that maybe we were inspired in a similar way by these rocks,” she said about the book. “But the vast imagination that Caillois derived from the interior of these stones was astonishing.”
Tami chuckled that she thought she was skilled at fantasizing until she read Caillois’ book and was amazed that he was far better at it. “My thoughts as I create are evolving little by little, even if that isn’t apparent now. But I hope to create work that would reflect this progression in the future,” she said. The transformation is already visible in her current work that are distinctly her own.
Kyusu by Yamada Yutaro in our shop->
While many red or shudei teapots are created using clay mixed with manufactured red iron oxide these days, the teapots of Yamada Yutaro are made using clay rich in iron dug out over half a century ago from under the rice paddy fields near Tokoname in Central Japan.
“I found out that back in the day, the best red clay was found in the paddy fields of neighboring towns like Kaminoma and Kowa,” Yutaro said. ‘Back in the day’ refers to the time when the famous Chinese tea pot maker Jin Shiheng arrived in Tokoname from Yixing in China in 1858 to teach local potters.
When I was growing up in the 1970s, most households in Japan owned a ceramic Kyusu teapot and a great majority of them were red. I still fondly remember sipping tea brewed in a vermillion teapot sitting around a heated table watching sumo with my grandparents. Owning a Kyusu teapot must have been a tradition dating all the way back to Jin’s arrival in Meiji Japan. Sadly, this is no longer the case in Japan where many people today get their tea from vending machines.
To make his shudei clay, Yutaro processes dried rock inherited from a now defunct local pottery. Preparing the clay is a physically demanding and time-consuming process, but as with everything else in craft, being uncompromising is often the best way to making good work.
I’ll leave it to the tea aficionados and scientists to judge if a shudei tea pot actually makes the tea taste sweeter and mellower as is reputed. But the fact is that the shudei ware made by Yamada Yutaro is not just about the looks. His teapots are made using carefully selected material with due process and attention that has been practiced and refined over the centuries by numerous generations of potters. I hope that Yutaro’s beautiful and painstakingly prepared work will entice more people to enjoy tea brewed in a teapot instead of coming from a plastic bottle.
Ceramics by Kazu Oba in our shop ->
How does September in sun-drenched San Diego sound? If you love the beaches, nature, and craft, this coming Labor Day weekend might be the perfect time to come and enjoy our laid back city when Entoten will host potter Kazu Oba from Colorado for an outdoor pop-up event at The Den on Laurel Street.
For the past 17 years, Kazu has dedicated his work to making functional, everyday ware used for food at home and at restaurants. Come and meet Kazu during the event, when he will share with you his passion for creating handmade ceramics for your table.
Saturday & Sunday, September 4 & 5, 2021
11am-5pm
at The Den on Laurel Street
(Click to launch Google Maps)
205 Laurel St. #104
San Diego CA 92101
Other work featured during the pop-up event includes:-
– Bamboo Baskets by Takami Yasuhiro
– Glasswork by Floresta Fabrica
– Tenugui by Harada Fumiko
– Chasen tea whisks by Tanimura Tango
In addition, a short stroll from the Den is the Mingei International Museum, the only Mingei museum outside of Japan, located inside the world famous Balboa Park. The Mingei will complete an ambitious three-year renovation and reopen to the public on September 3rd, and entry into the Museum will be free for all during the Labor Day Weekend. So come to San Diego and join our weekend celebration of craft!
Coffee Pour Over Sets and Cups by Kuriya Masakatsu in our shop->
I drink coffee every morning and to prepare it, I use a ceramic pour over set by Mashiko potter Kuriya Masakatsu. The dripper fits the paper filter (v60 #1&2 Hario) perfectly, and the pitcher’s long pointed spout pours beautifully into any handmade cup. They are ideal for me and maybe for you too, so I am very happy to share Kuriya-san’s Oribe work in my online shop for the first time in 8 years.
Many of you said that the Entoten pop-up event in June in Banker’s Hill was a great opportunity to see and touch craft in person after I closed my small gallery at the height of the Covid Pandemic in 2020. I wanted to find a place where people can see Kuriya san’s work in person, so I asked Ryosuke Goto, the owner of Bay Park Coffee, if he could let me borrow a small corner inside his shop to display Kuriya-san’s work, and he kindly agreed!
Bay Park Coffee is a popular local coffee shop only a few minutes away by car from my house. Ryosuke took over the ownership of the shop in 2018 after running a coffee stand inside a county office building for 4 years. It is a laid back and friendly coffee shop where Ryosuke and his staff takes the time and care to talk to you and get to know you. “I want Bay Park Coffee to be a place for people to gather and meet, a hub of new encounters and beginnings,” he says. Ryosuke also loves music and tea and hopes to collaborate with musicians and tea farmers by hosting them at Bay Park Coffee in the future.
So please stop by at Bay Park Coffee, have a cup of your favorite espresso drink pulled from their beautiful La Marzocco machine by their attentive staff, and see and hold Kuriya san’s work in person. The human aspect is the key ingredient for a good cup of coffee, don’t you agree?
While you drive down Morena Blvd., look out for the new trolley stations that are almost finished for San Diego’s Mid-Coast Trolley Extension. I’m surprised that hardly anyone around me talks about the trolley, but I’m excited, because coming from Tokyo, I love being on public transportation to gaze out the windows, people watch, and read as I go places. In November, the trolley extension will finally open and I will definitely take it to enjoy our newly connected community and get a cup of cortado from Bay Park Coffee.
Coffee Pour Over Sets and Cups by Kuriya Masakatsu will be available July 5th (Mon)-18th (Sun) 2021 at Bay Park Coffee: 4130 Napier St, San Diego, CA 92110 (Click for Google Maps)
Cooperage by Marshall Scheetz in our shop ->
As a passionate advocate for spreading knowledge and appreciation of craft, I am quietly proud that the most visited page on my website is “The Cooper’s Tools of the Trade” that links to a blog post I wrote several years ago about master cooper Marshall Scheetz from Williamsburg, Virginia. Since then, thousands of people have landed on this page after searching terms like “cooper’s tools,” or “coopering tools.”
These online searches show there is a growing demand for learning coopering skills. “People are fascinated about making buckets and especially tankards, but they quickly realize that the process is more difficult than they think,” Marshall said when we chatted online one afternoon at the end of April. “I’ve been doing this for over 20 years, and it’s still hard for me!” He joked.
We both tried to guess why so many people were searching about coopering tools on the Internet. I commented that several people had inquired about purchasing these tools. Coopers usually find their own tools by refurbishing old ones or modifying new ones to meet their specific needs, so using other tools that are not their own is unnatural. Marshall elaborated that “these tools are like an extension of myself,” so they always travel with him when he does demonstrations around the country.
In 2019, Marshall taught a “remaking” class at the Haystack Mountain School of Crafts. During the one week course, students learned to re-make a wine cask into a coopered vessel. By including the remaking aspect, Marshall wanted students to have a deeper understanding of how cooperage works. He mentioned that this particular course was one of the most difficult he had taught because he wanted everyone to take away a nice, coopered vessel at the end of the workshop. “I think some people wanted to come for a week and thought that they’d be able to go home and make buckets by themselves,” he said. But general woodworking skills don’t easily translate into coopering, and to be adept at building a simple bucket takes far longer to master than a week.
The new mini-cask that Marshall made for Entoten comes from re-used oak wine barrel staves. When I unboxed the cask, I could still smell the wine that these staves once held.
I asked Marshall whether it is more difficult to fix or re-make a damaged cask. “They are not any more difficult, but it can take as long or longer than making a new one, and refurbishing used staves really blunts the tools,” Marshall said. “So traditionally, coopers had two sets of tools, one for repairs and re-making and another for new cooperage.” He also explained that these mini-casks are known to coopers as “breakers,” as they filled the space between large casks. Casks had to be packed tightly in the hull of a ship during transport because if they moved, they could damage the ship or injure people.
When we met virtually, Marshall was in the middle of editing a video of himself making a cask to present at the annual meeting of the Early American Industries Association. The video is amazing to watch because you will be able to see a cask being made from start to finish using traditional tools. You will also get a glimpse of the rhythmical steps and sounds of Marshall hooping a cask, known as the cooper’s “dance.”
Before we finished our chat, Marshall moaned about the difficulty of creating a cask-making video by himself. “I never understood why shooting a movie takes so many people. It’s all clear to me now,” he exclaimed. I was amused by the contrast of such a complex production to the artistic beauty and simplicity of his cask-making process, all carried out single-handedly.
Summer is almost here and having now joined the vaccinated herd, I am happy to announce that I will be organizing an outdoor pop-up craft show over Memorial Day Weekend at a brand-new Japanese cultural space called “The Den on Laurel Street” that will be opening in Banker’s Hill, San Diego. The space is operated by the Takachiho Foundation to promote cultural understanding and exchange between the US and Japan.
Saturday & Sunday, May 29-30, 2021
11am-5pm
at The Den on Laurel Street
(Click to launch Google Maps)
205 Laurel St. #104
San Diego CA 92101
For the pop-up, I will have the work of many makers. This includes a large group of new nerikomi ceramics by Sakai Mika, a talented Japanese ceramic artist based in Shizuoka, Japan who creates patterned ceramics out of colored clay slabs. Colored clay is combined to create a pattern, and cut cross-wise to reveal the design, just like in the making of icebox cookies. The idea is simple but it takes a great amount of care and attention to detail to create these intricate patterns.
Mika’s cheerful works are among the most sought after items that I’ve carried in my shop over the last 9 years and they are also perfect for the brighter days ahead. Please join me if you can at the Den!
