May 10

I can’t believe it’s Friday again.  Actually.  I feel like the calendar is lying to me.  It seems like the Tuesday that I went home early was this Tuesday.  Not ten days ago.  Eric and I were in the art studio today trying to find something to smash against a rock, and I gave him one of the first plates that I made, that hadn’t turned out very well.  I made a video of it.  So it was a good project.

            I was thinking about how tableware has evolved in different areas, like how in Europe and the west, plates are traditionally round, and a table setting would look something like mine does.  I was reading about Japanese tableware in my book, Contemporary Tableware, by Linda Bloomfield.  She was saying that the foods that they eat in Japan have made the dishware evolve a certain way.  “Japanese meals often comprise small courses, each served on a separate dish. There is usually a small dish of pickled vegetables, a bowl of rice and a small, lidded lacquerware bowl of soup. Fish is often served on a flat dish and hot stews are cooked at the table in larger lidded bowls.”  She also talked about how the dishware is seasonal, and how dishes decorated a certain way would be used during certain times of the year.  Deeper bowls would be used during the winter to hold hot dishes, and more shallow bowls in the summer for cold dishes.  There are dishes that wouldn’t exist at all in western sets, like flat, rectangular sushi plates and soy sauce pourers.  I was reading about eastern pottery because I’m using porcelain, and the most impressive and famous porcelain works came from China.  The cobalt blue underglaze is so beautiful.  Chinese porcelain companies started exporting teapots to Europe when drinking tea became popular in the seventeenth century.

            These are some tea bowls made by Cape Cod potter Hollis Engley.  He has a studio in Hatchville.  I love the little thumb holes.  I love little tea bowls, too.  They don’t have handles, and you’re supposed to hold them from the rim and the bottom, which is just cozy.  Also making little porcelain handles is really no fun, so tea bowls are the way to go.  There are so many great potters on the Cape.  It’s kind of a funny place for all of the potters to collect.  Cape Cod.