Finished courses and unfinished business, Part II

Courses starting from June until end of August,

second half of the semester

Urushi: Kawarinuri (creating different Urushi surfaces)

Takahashi-sensei, Ogawa-sensei, alltogether 6 hours per week

In this course we learned to create different textures/surfaces with the help of urushi. At first every student was appointed 2 techniques by lot, then we could chose one more technique ourselves. I drew two techniques with the name 'Rankakunuri' ('eggshell paint') and 'Shumijin' ('vermillion particles') and as third I chose 'Yozakuranuri' ('night cherryblossom paint'). Pretty names, as are the surfaces they describe. With Rankakunuri, one uses urushi to glue on and fix an eggshell mosaic.

Here the polishing of the plate isn't yet finished.

For Shumijin, red urushipowder is created by painting many layers of urushi onto glass, a bottle for example, taking it off when it's dried and grinding it down. This powder is put onto a fresh layer of black urushi and covered with two more thin layers of black, then, after drying, it is sanded down with charcoal until the red particles resurface. That plate turned out really well, but unfortunately I forgot to take a picture of it before it was given back to school for demonstration purposes for other students. I might have to ask if I can have it back for a moment to take a picture... For the course I put the powder evenly to make the texture, but I would like to use it again later, then in a kind of sunburst version.

Then technique one I chose myself, the 'night cherry blossom' is kind of like a picture black on black, which you can only see if you look at how it reflects the light. You bascially 'raise' part of the top layer of black urushi by applying another, very slow drying kind of urushi. Then, when the whole thing is polished you can see the pattern you drew reflected against the light. This one came out best of the three plates, I like it a lot and definitely want to use it again.

The first picture shows the pattern draw in slowly drying urushi, the second shows how it looks immediately after the red urushi is washed off. Here, too, I thought I took a picture of the finished plate, but it seems little digital gnomes have eaten it off my hard drive...

Alltogether this was an especially nice course! It was kind of sad we only had the time to try out three different techniques because there's sooo many interesting surfaces one can create with urushi I think I find the possibilities with this even more interesting than using gold and silver powder to create a picture.

Urushi: Kanshitsu (making plates by hemp cloth and urushi)

Ogawa-sensei, (Hayashi-sensei), alltogether 6 hours per week

I wrote Hayashi-sensei in brackets because actually, in this course we were seperated into two groups. Some students used the technique I named above, the others were making wooden bowls by turning. Hayashi-sensei was mostly guiding the people doing the turning and I would have liked to try that as well, since it is different from the way I did it before in Lahti. At that moment though the Kanshitsu technique seemed to me the one with the most application possibilities so I definitely wanted to learn about it.

In that technique, an object is created by applying fabric to a plaster model with the help of urushi. To learn the techniqe with a relatively simple form our task was to create a set of plates after a traditional, kind of flower-shaped model. Basically we all made the same kind of plate in the same size, but since everybody shaped the rim and the 'petals' themselves, each set of plates turned out slightly different. I'm very interested in this technique since theoretically you can make any form you like. I made only 3 plates in the traditional form but convinced Ogawa-sensei that I could also make 4 plates of my own design. We should have gotten them far enough for the plates to be removed from the plaster model, but I got my three only until short before that, meaning the next step for them it to be detached from the plaster. 

 

The traditional models, still on their plaster base...

... and my own plaster model.

And courses spanning the whole semester

Craft History and Modern Craft

both courses by Oukuma-sensei, 1 ½ hours per week each

I had chosen these courses mostly to try and study a bit Japanese as well as to get to look at some pretty pictures of Japanese and Asian craft works respectively. I did get to see many nice pictures and maybe even got the drift of some of the things Oukuma-sensei was talking about, but when it comes to learning to understand, this turned out to be not quite the right lesson for it. While towards the end of the semester I have started to understand pretty well what all other teachers are saying, it seems almost impossible to understand Oukuma-sensei. He talks faster than I've ever heard a Japanese talk so far, and he gravely shortens words and expressions in between to the extent that even some Japanese students have told me they have to really concentrate to get everything of what he says. So, unfortunately, no, even at the end of the semester I still hardly understood anything. And with the transcription of his lessons logically in Japanese (and therefor in kanji) it also was impossible to make any notes which meant I also did not participate in the final test in the end. I think I got some kind of credit for being there, tough, lucky me.

As for content the History Craft course pretty much equalled the Art History course we had in Finland, though from a Japanese/Asian point of view of course, while Modern Craft equalled Design History. What I found very interesting was that objects that were shown to us from the Joumon age of Japan, about 13000 B.C., seemed as if plugged from a designer shop in the main shopping lane of some big city. They were absolutely modern in design, their forms minimalistic, functional, timeless and beautiful.

I also somehow got the drift that basically the Japanese seem to have invented almost nothing on their own, but that they tended to take some idea, technique or object from another culture and then change and improve it until it suited their needs and their perfectionism and had along the way turned into something uniquely Japanese. I wish I had been able to understand more about that, since it sounded intriguing. Nowadays it sometimes seems as if as so-called designers people expect us to create something never there before and here comes a whole country building its culture out of bits and pieces of other cultures and allthewhile creating some of the most beautiful and timeless design ever. Take Zen gardens for example, or Ikebana, the Japanese flower arrangement, or just a traditional Japanese house with it's careful puzzle of rectangles and squares in a space which can be changed perpetually, always to suit the user's need. If that isn't good design, then there is no good design.

I just wish modern live hadn't led those people toward this moloch of consumerism that Japan mostly seems to be nowadays...

But onward to the last...

Urushi: Urushi tools

Ogawa-sensei, Saito-sensei, alltogether 3 hours per week

In this course we learned how to make and/or maintain tools that are needed for urushi work. We also used urushi a little to make a lunchbox (we got the ready wooden model, but then strengthened the corners with hemp fabric and applied several layers of urushi ourselves).

We got the blade I told about in my first school-related post, and learned to sharpen it. We also got a hand planer and learned to sharpen its blades as well as generally preparing it for usage. Two basic urushi brushes, made form human hair, needed to be cut into form as well as the bristles softened with a hammer and urushi applied to their handles. Then we also prepared 'hera', wooden spatulas for mixing and applying urushi. Those were made from long, rectangle pieces of Japanese cedar wood, split into half and each piece cut to shape with the help of knife and planer (in the end you can get 4 heras out of one basic rectangle of wood). We also got two spatulas from another, harder wood which we also needed to plane and cut before they could be used.

Here a general picture of the tools:

On the left, on its side, the planer, at the tops the spatulas. The backside of the blade, the handle of which is wrapped with parachute string (ribbon?) after the model of the blades of two of my senpais, though in a slightly different pattern. The brushes are on the right and the big oval thing is of course the finished lunchbox.

So there we go. Those were my courses and works so far. As I have described in the 'High on Dance' posts I didn't manage to get many of the works ready. The hemp cloth plates for example, or the one maki-e plate. In the urushi surface course I also didn't manage to get the eggshell plate completely ready, though I was able to finish that in the week following the official critics. Fortunately though, the teachers didn't seem to take my not being ready all that badly. I think they did understand that I was really busy and that the fact that I didn't get the stuff ready definitely didn't have to do with lack of interest.

My personal project about explaining the creation of an urushi surface step-by-step has also been proceeding slower than I would have wanted it to, but then with this I have more leeway anways, since it's work I do on the side, in my own time. Still, for the next term I want to be able to present Ogawa-sensei and Takahashi-sensei with at least a basic framework of how I want the finished research ”book” to look, with all the information I have gathered so far including pictures. That means I still have a lot to do in the next 2 weeks before the next term starts...

This Saturday is Mugiya, one more festival on which I will dance with TNC, then after that I won't dance on any festivals anymore except the school festival at the end of October. On sunday I will go to Kanazawa, a city I experienced for the first time together with my mum and which I liked a lot already after only one day. There's a jazz festival going on there and I think it might be fun as well as an important change of scenery for me to just go there and walk around, listening to some hopefully good music along the way. I have been a bit homesick after my mum left, but the Japanese have been good to me and I have things to occupy me. Going to school and seeing my classmates helps a lot, the seniors from the yosakoi team have asked me out with them to a bar, too, and my Japanese is getting better... Now if only the temperatures dropped below 30 degrees and autumn started to turn the leaves red. And eventually it will!

Hopefully you will not have to wait too long for the next post, which should be about the 3 weeks holiday I spent here in Japan together with my mum! Until then, a picture of harvested fields, heralding 'Aki', autumn.