Pottery

Going back in time to 2011 and 2013, I made two trips to Japan, and on those trips I stopped by Gifu. Gifu is located near Nagoya and is well known for its pottery. Truthfully, I have no idea where in Gifu I went (my geography is rubbish lol) since we were very most kindly taken by an old classmate's mother in her car. She goes there every week to do pottery at her sensei's house, and offered us a chance to get our hands dirty with clay and try our skill at making something.

The studio was amazing, packed full with all kinds of creations and tools and I was so nervous I would accidentally break something!

After introductions and translations, we were handed aprons and shown how to work our wheels. Theres a pedal to press which controls the speed of the rotations and if you press too hard while trying to create something... well... lets just say I had a couple of creations that went flying lol.

The clay was surprisingly hard to press down on, making my arms really sore after. But the sensei made it look so effortless and he just pressed here and lifted there and suddenly a plate was born, then transformed into a bowl, and then into a cup! We secretly called him godhands lol. He was amazing!

 After several attempts we all ended up with about 8 pieces each. We could then pick and choose which ones we wanted fired and glazed. As we were only there for the day, we weren't able to glaze them ourselves, so the kind sensei offered us several choices of glaze that we could pick for each piece we wanted. We also gave him our initials or kanji to be carved into the base so we would know who made which.

This was the standout piece of the boy, who accidentally made it wonky but the sensei was really amused and praised it, saying how wabisabi it was! We definitely chose this as one of the final pieces and it still makes me laugh to this day whenever I look at it.
After the pieces were done, our friend's mom kindly shipped them to us all nicely packaged along with photos of us getting messy lol. Here are some of our works from both trips:

 

We all had enormous fun and look at all the amazing pieces that came out of it! The gorgeous colours make me so happy whenever I look at them! Mine are currently sitting in a cabinet on display, too precious to use at the moment lol
Big huge thanks to the sensei and to Ryo's mom for all that they did for us! Each trip was definitely an unforgettable experience and if given the chance, I would love to go back again and try glazing as well this time!