First visite to Mashiko Pottery Fair

I visited the well known Mashiko Pottery Fair for the first time this year. It was in the Spring time edition. They have one in May and another one in November. It was a very intense and exciting experience. First of all because Japan is kind of a dreamed land to me, a place of inspiration and joy -of many kinds. Second, Mashiko is probably the most well known Japanese pottery town out of Japan. By the way, this is because the relationship between Hamada Shoji and Bernard Leach, but many Japanese potters consider other areas of production more significative than Mashiko. In any case, visiting that famous spot is always remarkable. And finally, because I had the opportunity to meet a lot of great people, get many new inspirations, and clarify some of the thoughts that were flying over my head in the past months.

The pottery fair gathers about 500 potters from many different places of Japan. Maybe about the 80 percent of the work that you find is pretty simple and non very interesting, but there is a 20 percent that is fabulous!

Mashiko Tougei Club. This is the building where the rooms are.

I stayed at a Mashiko Tougei Club, commonly known as well as Furuki San place. It's a nice old style japanese house, that rent rooms to visitors and people taking clases at their workshop (they give pottery clases too). It's comfortable enough and not expensive for the Japanese standards. And you can just walk up to the center of the town in 10 min. The interesting thing about this place is that it's kind of known in the community of potters in Japan, and you can find a lot of interesting people passing by. So finally it's kind of a easy way to get (a little bit) integrated in the local community.

Here I am throwing some cups.

Some very nice people that I met at Furuki San place are Jesualdo and Akane, a Spanish and Japanese couple, both potters. The last thing I spected was to find a compatriot in a lost small pottery town in Japan. He lived there for more than 20 years. First in Tokyo, then Mashiko and after the 2011 earthquake, he moved with Akane and their kid to Awaji Island. You can see part of their work at their website.

Jesualdo and Akane.

There are actually serval westerners living and working in Japan, many of them have been there for very long time. One of them is Euan Craig. He was giving some demonstrations at his stand. He is actually a quite successful potter in Japan with exhibitions in some of the most important galleries. Even if I didn't have the opportunity to discuss with him for very long, I could very easily feel that he is a super nice person. Check his blog, it's great!

Euan Craig at work in his stand.

Another person that I met at Furuki San place is Masakazu Kusakabe San (by the way, "San" means Mr. -it's a polite way to refer to a person). Kusakabe San is a very intense potter that is specialized in building wood kilns. Actually he was at Furuki's house to make the preparations to build a new kiln. He published a book about the matter and travels around the world making workshops. He even came to China a couple of times to give those workshops at Jingdezhen. A cool guy, with an unstoppable energy.

Kusakabe San is the first from the left.

Here they are taking measurements to build the new wood kiln.

During my walks through the multiple stands I got to talk to other potters, and even buy some pieces that I found beautiful.

An unforgettable experience that I will repeat for sure next year. It will be nice to see all this people and all that ceramic again. Japan is always a good place to visit!