I first traveled to Japan when I was nineteen years old, and spentthe better part of the next eleven or twelve years there. Althoughmy initial interest in Japan was sparked by some awareness of medievalstonewares and the writings of Bernard Leach about the modern folkart movement, what captured my attention as a resident was quitedifferent. Wrapped up in the ordinary details of day-to-day life(nichijo-sahanji, literally "everyday rice and tea,")my focus shifted to the needs of the contemporary kitchen and tabletop.

Tea in Japan, good and bad, is ubiquitous; and for a potter, impossibleto ignore. While I found myself resisting and rejecting the pretenseand artificiality of much of "tea culture," and all thatsurrounds the "tea ceremony," I also drank boatloads oftea. Most of the tea consumed in Japan is not the powdered tea ofthe tea ceremony, but rather green, leaf tea brewed in fashion quitesimilar to tea in Taiwan and many parts of mainland China. As apotter, then, I found myself inexorably involved in the businessof making teapots -- teapots for tea as it is brewed in contemporaryJapan.

My primary inspiration (or frame of reference) for making teapotslies in that Japanese experience. I used many teapots there, mademany teapots there, and saw many, many more. I knew vaguely thatthe unglazed vitreous stonewares of Banko and Tokoname were in someway based on Chinese wares, but hadn't really made the connectionto Yixing (or as I knew the place name then, I-Hsing.)

About my second or third year in Japan I became particularly enamoredof the work of an eighteenth century Kyoto potter known as (Aoki)Mokubei. Along with "Douhachi" and "Eiraku"he is among the best known of Edo period potters. Among examplesextant of the work of Mokubei are a number identified as gikouyou-utsushiwhich means "copied from Yixing," but knowing only theJapanese reading for the characters, did not put the two togetheruntil much later.

The upshot of all this is that while the influence of Yixing canbe found in my work, the influence has been filtered through theJapanese examples I know first hand. Since moving to Utah in 1984,I've learned a bit more about the originals - actual work from Yixing- and I am certain that knowledge cannot but manifest itself inthe work I do in the future.