Tree xylem consumes the environment. It allows sap to circulate and transport various minerals extracted by the roots to other parts of the plant. These nutrients constitute the mineral part of the trees surrounding us. Trees appear to me as living composed of a plant part and a mineral part. When the heat of fire transforms this plant matter, it releases gases which other plants consume, leaving behind its mineral part, which we call “ashes.” Ashes require very high temperatures to be transformed, which are mainly observed in geological phenomena. The links between the environment’s “minerality” and its flora appear to be intrinsic to the trees that surround me. They are their expression, illustrated in various forms. Thus, for a specific entity, such as a tree, there is an impressive diversity of forms expressing themselves and constituting themselves through particular relations to the same environment.
In other places and in different times (archaeology indicates a spread from China in the 5th century AD, to Korea in the 7th century, then to Japan in the 8th century, with a new phase of development from the 12th to the 16th century AD), humans observed the flaws produced on ceramic surfaces by the mineral part of trees freed during high-temperature firing. Volatile ashes damage certain glazes by interfering with their transformation or contaminating the desired colours’ stability. The unpredictability of its effects on glazes was likely unpopular because it disrupts the narratives that great empires create about themselves as they perpetuate their own image throughout their distinct material productions. Trees, the only fuel available for transforming clay into stone for several centuries, have been burned in various structures throughout history However, the most rudimentary and practical form for a high-temperature firing structure remains a tunnel dug into the side of a mountain. These tunnels are excavated into hills made of refractory clay (kaolin, derived from the Chinese word gaoling 高岭 , meaning “high hills,” and which is also the name of a village near Jingdezhen 景德, the porcelain capital located in Jiangxi Province 江西). Their natural slope helps to accelerate the flame and a strong draft causes the heat to move toward the rear of the channel. The ancient craftsmen placed large quantities of “green” clay pieces in the centre of the tunnel, reserving the first part of the structure (the mouth or firebox) for fuel. Ideal combustion develops over 360 degrees Celsius, and the cube shape appears to be the perfect model for representing the tip of a match being lit (depending on the production requirements, this ideal shape can be stacked longitudinally).
A phenomenal amount of wood is burned in these tunnel-kilns, and the only way to achieve high temperatures is to leave plenty of space for combustion at the kiln entrance, while obstructing the flames with the arrangement of the pots to prevent them from escaping too quickly through the chimney. This involves working against the natural tendency of fire to take the shortest route (upward and toward the centre). Like water, which always chooses the path of least resistance, fire is enviably lazy. Tunnel-kilns, called anagama in Japan (kanji : 穴窯/ Hiragana : あながま), can only be fired to maturity if they are meticulously filled with clay pieces. When empty, the heat escapes, and it is difficult to exceed 800 degrees Celsius. The clay pieces serve to stock heat inside the kiln, but if they are packed too tightly, they will also stifle the passage of the flames. Their positioning is similar to stones in a river; they alter the flow of the water, but do not cause it to overflow or change course. It is through a carefully negotiated arrangement with the shape of the tunnel that the clay objects can be brought to maturity to become ceramic.The selected placement allows the crafted ceramics to accumulate deposits on the side facing the brazier. The opposite side will remain less affected by its relation with the fire, but without it, there would be no contrast and no indication of the positioning. The flames become actant in the process.
The deposits are formed by the mineral part of the fuel wood, which is released at around 1200 degrees Celsius. When the kiln reaches these high temperatures, the mineral part is liquefied. It volatilizes and disperses according to the layout of the pots, striking here and there, accumulating where the chimney draft aids the passage of fire. This is followed by a process of maintaining the temperature over a prolonged period. This can vary from 4 to 5 days to more than a month (for a kiln shared by an entire village). This stage can be likened to a battle to feed a monster that devours everything in its path. A beast whose greed is rooted in abundance itself. This creature serves to convey a logic of excess: a paradox in which the anticipated satisfaction only exacerbates the need. The kiln feeds itself to ruin; its insatiability dooms it, suffocating it in an overabundance of combustion that cuts off its oxygen supply. The catastrophe is partly under human control. It is interrupted when relations reach the effort level of previous relations; experience cannot bypass the time that must be given to learning; duration and learning are stored up in gestures that exhaust the body; the body seeks to validate learning, and experience is accumulated and compared. In this phenomenon, the atmosphere is highly constricting, but it is constantly fluctuating due to the varying oxygen influx. This periodicity provides an additional rhythm to that of the moon and sun (the nychthemeral rhythm influences the circadian rhythm), and profoundly modifies the clay by alternating surpluses and deficiencies. The deep time of geology thus appears accessible to human worlds, as the micro-phenomena observed in tunnel-kilns are homologous to the macro processes involved in the production of bedrock, which provides an environment that favours the emergence of diversified plant life. When melting, the heat produced by the sap of certain trees (mainly conifers and softwoods, with different expressions depending on the geographical environment) liquefies the minerals stored in their bark, allowing them to interact with silica, an essential constituent to the incandescent clay. Clay and glazes are made of the same minerals as those contained in the xylem. The environment then seems to me as folded in on itself. It recomposes and recognizes itself. Humans take part in the environmental changes. Similar to the tree, they are intermediaries between the long history of geological deposits stored by the xylem and their diffusion on fired clay objects.
Relations to objects and daily uses as revealing processes that have disappeared and are challenging to control. The symbolic value of these objects is constantly negotiated with the user (to the point where one can no longer distinguish between the two), and it’s this effort that is pursued. There is no linearity, but rather a circularity resembling that of carbon, which continues its cycle flowing through rituals. This opens up a spirituality that no longer separates objects from subjects and tends to elevate chance and accidents to account for our modesty. How fortunate we are to have these objects that have undergone the anagama process and survived it. Regardless of their condition, these objects are left in the forest for several years to accelerate their aging. They are born, transformed, analogous to living organisms, and characterized by their poverty, modesty, and asymmetry. Their traces and occurrences tell stories. How are the stories we tell ourselves connected to the environment? How do these cultural particularities—reflected in unique clay transformation processes or aesthetic choices conducive to happening, aging, or asymmetry—evoke a culturally situated territory? The question raises issues of contours and dimensions: contours that define the individual in their environment, dimensions of geological macro-processes and micro-phenomena between clay, fire, wood, and humans. What is a tree then? It accumulates its environment and releases it onto the clay. Is the bowl from which I drink an extension of the tree, or of the environment expressed through trees? A micro-environment in which the history of geological forces is repeated on a human scale? Are the relations or rituals that the tea bowl nurtures human behaviours or behaviours of the environment? A common ground that brings our behaviours together? A paradigm, then? When will we know that the paradigm is changing? And what memory will allow us to remember what we did during this period? Is the memory of objects enough? Have our bodies and muscles learned? Objects that transcend the existence of our bodies, no doubt. Rock and, fortunately, ceramics survive us. In this paradigm, revealed by our efforts and negotiations towards a “catastrophic process”, levels of reality become entangled and, through a single object, a rarely glimpsed environment emerges, revealing trees, their composition, and the periodicity and behaviours necessary to make them melt.
The mind can alter our perception of the body’s dimensions in this vast shared territory, because the mind seeks objects on which to rest, objects that the mind itself has produced within the constraints of the environment. By settling there, the mind takes the body on a journey, allowing it to change its order of magnitude, to become oversized in the face of the smallness of the resulting landscapes, or to shrink in the face of the geological time scale. When they apply the necessary efforts to go through the anagama kiln process, the mind and body are the same (the environment and the organism are one). The body retains the energy used to store the environment on objects, enabling it to drink hot water. It’s in their use that the mind returns to the environment, perceiving so many landscapes on the surface of these “catastrophe-objects,” which have become “landscape-objects”. Secular human cultures are therefore inseparable from the land that constitutes them and with which they negotiate and into which they project themselves. These are cultural lands. If we zoom in and delve into their interior, sharing their particularities through immersion, we realize that they are constructed like trees that link territory and organicity. Suppose we use language to translate the territory for us. In that case, we will hear them translate it through linguistic constructions, translating the environment into phonemes and morphemes that express it (and reveal the landscapes that make a difference for them). Stored in artifacts made when humans join forces to create forms, these “cultural expressions” come in a wide variety that reveal only a tiny part of an infinite territory. For us, these include hi-iro, hishoku, nuke, bota mochi, himado, kasane-yaki, shizenyu, gomabai, enoki-hada, shimi, melon-hada, hanten, amibai, tamadare, biidoro, yu-damari, shinshoku, sangiri, koge, and many more…
I managed to acquire it by writing directly to the artist who was opening an exhibition at the Robert Yellin Yakimono Gallery last December. It arrived directly from Kyoto via friends who were traveling there. I must admit that before this, I had had very little experience with these foreign territories that are closed in on themselves. Before this encounter, I was seeking to bring out, through the objects that are an extension of me, what remained surprising in myself, what remained unknown to me to negotiate. But this is paradoxical, because in order to discover it, I had to stop marvelling and give up learning (it was to validate my learning of a technique borrowed from the other side of the world that I felt compelled to compare myself through our respective objects). I choose to no longer transport my body as a way of traveling. This is something I find difficult to tolerate. The blurred line between travelling and entertainment reflects a predatory exploitation of exoticism that I refrain from participating in. The game of changing dimensions and validating a set of possibilities (what I achieve on my own in my kilns must be compared with what is produced in Osamu’s paradigm) has enriched my desire to explore other territories, not necessarily through language or travel, but through encounters with a thing.
These encounters do not happen ex nihilo. In ceramics, understood as a practice, there are elements that have been previously formed in the entities that meet, and these transcend human experience. Not everything is co-constituted by the relation itself. There is a certain modesty to be cultivated when I access parts of territory formed on other continents and folded into other eras. Sometimes it is appropriate to make oneself small in the face of the complexity of the phenomena that precede us. In this encounter, several levels of reality entangle and emanate from Inayoshi Osamu’s ceramics. Three complementary regions that traverse and constituent. They give me access to a plural form of “reality,” allowing me to include different facets that result in the production of an in vivo knowledge, or even hidden third knowledge. This knowledge sets up a battlefield between the individual and the collective, between thought and matter, between experience and learning (and which challenges the authority of a monistic view of reality). Like the tea bowl or tunnel-kilns, this division into three regions has a subtle basis that refers to an ever-increasing proximity between the subject and the object, to the point where the object is described by analogy with the subject and defines a culturally situated ontology (which is reflected in morphemes and cultural behaviours). Neither in vivo knowledge nor the complementary facets of a partial reality can exist or be glimpsed without the relationship, use, encounter, and subjective experience.
Without this activation, there is no fusion of levels of reality and no confusion between subject and object.
The first level of reality is obviously that of the geological bedrock, which is eroded by wind and precipitation. It is the physical and chemical composition of the bedrock that defines the composition of the local clay on the Atsumi Peninsula in Japan, which in turn indicates the behaviours and structures necessary for its transformation in order to exist as a form in the human worlds. The clay produced by erosion must be composed in such a way as to withstand the exposure to fire for several days. This first level of reality therefore corresponds to the forces of environmental transformation, resulting in a material with variable qualities that must withstand a sufficiently destructive fire to transform clay into rock and lava, then back into rock again. This level can be explained by classical physics, since this is the field that studies the fundamental laws that make it possible to understand the dynamics shaping the terrestrial systems that the geosphere is made up of (geological formations and their transformation, for example). In this reality, the clay used in Osamu’s guinomi is the direct product of the chemical alteration of silicate rocks under the effect of processes, probably granites, schists, and gneisses (found on the Atsumi Peninsula in the Aichi District). It bears witness to the slow disintegration of feldspars into kaolinite and illite, a process that occurs at the interface between the lithosphere and the pedosphere. The clay used by Inayoshi Osamu is ferruginous and refers to an alluvial or colluvial deposit environment, where elements leached from the bedrock have accumulated in the form of fine sediments. This clay is a physical archive of the thousand-years-old geodynamics of the Atsumi Peninsula. Its rough to grainy texture has prominent irregularities and uneven reliefs, signalling the presence of quartz and feldspar particles. These mineral inclusions, characterized by a grain size ranging from very fine to fine or medium, have not completely melted, and the shard appears to have low porosity, indicating a high temperature firing typical of stoneware. The anagama firing process reorganizes the internal structure of the clay into a new and irreversible structure, which we call ceramic. This structural change vitrifies the clay, which is “closed” by heat and whose maturity is confirmed by the sound it makes when tapped with a finger. Anagama firing causes a kinetic increase in the clay particles (and the kiln itself), and the acceleration of their movement leads to stronger interactions. As the temperature rises, the particles begin to melt and form new chemical bonds. These bonds increase the ceramic’s rigidity and hardness. Clay changes from an amorphous state to a crystalline one, and it’s this transformation that makes it impermeable. From an energy perspective, anagama firing involves converting thermal energy into chemical energy and relies on direct radiation from the flames, which accumulates within the clay mass, causing the temperature to rise. The temperature can reach 1250–1300°C, and even higher, with uneven distribution in the firing chamber (fluctuating gas and temperature due to variations in the firing process). The chemical conversion is indicated by the change of the iron’s state in the paste due to the firing process, which alternates the supply of oxygen and carbon through the constant addition of fuel, giving the shards a dark gray to brown color.
The second level of reality pervading Osamu’s guinomi is that of the plant life found in the Atsumi Peninsula geological environment. As fuel for tunnel kilns, trees are dependent on soil composition, and their function in firing is directly linked to the environment that produces them (trees release the minerals they contain, and conifers are prioritized). Biological phenomena are therefore inseparable from the first level of reality, and the geomorphology of the environment favours the plant species best suited to its biotopes. Not all trees burn well, and not all environments are conducive to the development of suitable fuels (not all human groups have developed anagama kilns). This level can be explained by the life sciences, since this field studies the laws that enable us to understand the dynamics that shape the biological systems that make up the biosphere (organisms and ecosystems, for example). In this reality, the ash cover that slowly forms on the stacked ware during an anagama firing over several days is similar to the organic-mineral litter that settles at the foot of trees and stratifies into a black, soft humus layer, rich in minerals and sometimes carbonaceous, which time and water runoff will leach away. Like dead leaves or fine pollen dust that accumulates on the bedrock and contributes to its formation, ash does not cover stoneware, but interacts with and incorporates into the clay. Potassium, calcium, phosphorus, and magnesium, which result from tree growth, become the fusion agents triggering effects when they come into contact with the agents contained in the clay (silica, feldspar, etc.).
The ashes from the fuel-tree are scattered throughout the firing chamber, resulting in a colour gamut ranging from pale blue to ultramarine, with semi-translucent shades reminiscent of glassy deposits rich in silica and alkalis. The bluish tones on one of the guinomi’s sides also reveal the presence of phosphates, reduced iron, or traces of volatile copper carried by the draft from the tunnel-kiln’s chimney. The colour distribution is uneven across the piece’s surface. Inside the guinomi, an accumulation of melted natural ash forms a shiny layer, sometimes cracked on a microscopic scale, resulting in deep shades of light cyan blue, reminiscent of calcium deposits in waters rich in microbial life. The guinomi is an archive of life, a fossilized record of the interactions between organic and mineral matter that bear witness to an exchange between the bedrock and the trees that express it. Like an accelerated biogeochemical cycle, anagama firing creates a metabolic interface between ash and shards. A space for exchange and crystallization similar to the interface between the roots and the bedrock of the Atsumi Peninsula. A transition from the biosphere to the geosphere, inviting us to consider the firing process carried out by Inayoshi Osamu as an extreme eco-physiological process, through which clay interacts with elements from burning biomass. On a biological scale, the anagama process is a transmutation of biomaterial into geo-material.
The third level of reality underpinning the guinomi is that of the sensory experience linked to its use, as well as to embodied knowledge situated in a cultural context far removed from the “paradigm that Inayoshi Osamu embodies”. As an interface between the geosphere and the biosphere, this guinomi bears witness to an unstable and fertile fusion zone, giving rise to an unpredictable glaze. Taken out of its cultural context, the guinomi reveals another form of interface that enables exchange and sharing between different human cosmologies, a sensitive interface where scales and boundaries are converted. The humanities and social sciences can explain this level, as they are the field that studies the dynamics shaping the human systems that constitute what some call the anthroposphere or the noosphere (ideas, individuals, societies, and their particularities, for example). In lived experience, different levels of reality are intertwined, and each level is what it is because all the other levels exist simultaneously. Their combination allows me to reflect on alternative relations between organism and environment or between ontology and epistemology. I believe that it’s experiential knowledge that ensures the intertwining of these levels of reality. It’s my study of wood firing, clay crafting, geological phenomena as recorded by archaeology, and the effects of fire linked to the trees around me that help me describe the coherence between these levels of reality through an iterative process (whether writing or material experimentation). On this level, the accumulation of vitrified ash at the bottom of the guinomi expresses a nebula, a stellar sea, or a condensed galaxy. A fluid constellation of deep blues, milky and opaque streaks forming scattered clouds that open up to an embodied meditation, where the use of the bowl transforms the perception of oneself, of time, and of the cosmic scale. The thing now integrates me. My body is tiny. The micro and the macro are blurred.
The guinomi is alive. It is no longer merely a mechanical product, but rather a creation rooted in a material biography and an ontological regime in which artefacts can age, evolve, and interact with their environment. The guinomi is born, matures, ages, and bears the marks of its exposure to fire. From an anthropological perspective, the experience brings to life a relational ontology specific to certain Japanese cosmologies, in which objects are not separate from living beings but are silent partners or transformative agents. The bowl does not represent a galaxy: it contains one. Not in a literal sense, but in an (onto)logic of material animation where matter itself is inhabited, active, and communicating. In this worldview, materials and beings coexist and co-constitute each other. The anagama kiln is animated. It is analogous to the human digestive system. Packing the pieces too tightly can obstruct firing (constipating it) and, conversely, spacing them too far apart can prevent the temperature from rising (purging it). The noise it makes as it devours fuel and its insatiable appetite also make it similar to a dragon. The kiln is therefore not perceived as a simple tool, but as an organic entity, both unstable and whimsical, summoning a tacit and situated knowledge.
The narrative of anthropology complements the one that is recounted by the morphemes of fire, which express the cracks, drippings, and effects of ashes. By accounting for this level of reality, anthropology does not extract universal knowledge, but documents an ecology of relations. It recognizes that its own discourse merely accompanies the narratives already conveyed by materials, flames, and potters (by the geosphere, biosphere, and anthroposphere). It studies with people and with entities. IT DOES NOT SET ITSELF UP AS AN AUTHORITY. By following the trajectory of Osamu’s guinomi, from his kiln in Aichi Prefecture to its use here in Quebec, I feel that I am accessing an alternative way of learning and a non-extractive intercultural encounter. Like a child learning to learn, choosing the path of least resistance (like water, like fire), Osamu’s guinomi stimulates an iterative process (of repetition and comparison) that reflects open and infinite knowledge that is self-reproducing, embodied, and situated. Its use opens up shared ontologies made compatible by subjective experience, which unifies the various levels of reality and gives them coherence. Because subjective experience cannot be contradicted.
“My grandfather’s ashes were placed in a mass-produced urn radiating white, cold light. Inside, I whispered to myself that this was not the vessel I wanted for someone I loved. Looking back, I realized that strong emotion I felt at the time led me to the path of pottery making. As a potter, I shape clay by hand, connecting the inherent nature within and the external nature around us. I feel the passage of time that my birthplace, once a major pottery site, has endured and try to blend it into my work. My hometown, Atsumi, was known for “Atsumi ware,” pottery that was actively made from the 12th to the 13th century (from the Heian to the Kamakura periods). Reviving its lost kilns and restoring the ancient techniques hold great importance for me. In the process of making pottery, as I feel the clay in my hands and move them steadily, I can sense a rhythm and flow akin to the natural order of things. This sensation humbles my heart filling it with a reverence for nature. Then, memories of playing and learning in nature as a child come flooding back, merging my time with the time of the clay, and my pottery-making process progresses. Everything in the natural world decays, decomposes, and is reborn in a cycle of life. Pottery, too, is meant to exist within such a cycle, made from earth and eventually returning to it.
When taking works from the kiln, there are pieces that, due to varying conditions and chance, do not conform to “the ideal shape based on human values” and typically would be returned to the earth as failures. However, there are moments when their form appears incredibly beautiful to me, prompting me to preserve them as they are, presenting them as part of my “Deviation and Cycle” series. While inheriting the beauty and techniques of Japanese pottery made in the medieval period, including Atsumi ceramic ware, I spend my days making pottery with a reverence for nature. Through handicraft, I aim to express the flow of time and the changes that objects undergo within it. I hope people will hold and touch my diligently handcrafted works, using traditional techniques, to feel the soft memory of the earth. To convey the soil of Atsumi and our predecessors’ techniques is my path, and I continue to create day by day.” — 稲吉 オサム Inayoshi Osamu
(1) WEBSITE : https://inayoshiosamu.com/
(N.B.: This text is not intended to legitimize established knowledge, but rather offers a contextualized narrative in which ideas are explored and compared rather than imposed. Hence the deliberate absence of a bibliography.)
PHOTO CREDITS: Inayoshi Osamu (photos 1 to 6, and 11), Yanik Potvin (photos 7 to 10).
TRANSLATION : Bernard Schütze
LINGUISTIC REVISION : Marianne Chénard
Yanik Potvin holds a certificate in biology (UQAM), a bachelor’s degree in anthropology specializing in ethnolinguistics (UdM) as well as a master’s degree in visual arts (UQAC). He worked as a professional archaeologist between 2004 and 2018. Since 2012, his work has been presented in several regions of Quebec, Alberta, France, the Czech Republic, Sweden, Greece and the United States. His works are found in the collection of the University of Quebec in Chicoutimi, the Kohoutov Ceramics Studio in the Czech Republic, the Medalta center in Alberta, in that of the Musée des Maîtres Artisans du Québec, as well as in several private collections. He is a founding member of the METAceramique group (2019), focused on contextual and material research-creation of clay and its ceramic variations. He has taught in the department of arts, letters and language (DALL) at UQAC since 2014 and is pursuing a doctorate in arts studies and practices at UQAM.
