Here in B.C., despite a growing interest in the crafts, the majority of
the public still knows little about them. Yet this public can be
interested; it can learn to distinguish good design from bad. The work
of B.C. craftsmen should be presented to it as something apart from
dubious commercial design and nicknacks. I suggest that our growing
Potters' Guild alone, or in co-operation with other B, C. Guilds,

should begin to seriously consider the establishment of a permanent
studio area for the exhibition and sale of handcrafted wares.

Charmian Johnson

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Raku
... by Gillian Hodge

?A Japanese party game with Zen overtones?
? A useful method of demonstration ?
? An entertainment ?

Perhaps all these things - and none of them.

Basically in pottery we are concerned with first things - earth, water,
fire; and perhaps, in the simple methods of bonfire, we come closest to
our beginnings: dig clay and sand - a pit - simple shapes - build a fire
and from the ashes, dig again to uncover the transformed pots with
their soft, subtle colours that the fire has given them. Take bricks -
build a simple kiln - fire with wood to a fierce heat. The fire beats
and glows on the strong shapes of the drying pots; more wood - the
colour of the flame changes, the little kiln throbs with heat; put the pot
in with long, fumbling tongs. The roar of the flame; again the tongs,
out comes the translucent, glowing pot - which? into the leaves to
smoke ? into the water to hiss and bubble? And then there is this new
object with every experience clearly written in the form - here the
glaze flowed like water across the pebble shape, there it bubbled; that
rich black, where did it come from? the foot is a soft, sooty black;

a streak of brown. It seems that in the light of the fire the potter reads
his mistakes; sees how little his skill counts in the richness that is
given by his materials. He learns, with excitement, where to impose
his will; where to accept what he cannot control and rely on the fire

and the shifting smoke.

2.