In Defence of Tradition .... because of the heart, in spite of the head.
.... Outside the mist hangs loosely, coolly caressing the still and stately branches of the walnut.... And as the sun rises drops of mist-water can be faintly heard as the young, fragile buds quietly renew. Life is once again given form different from last year; yet the same. Milleniums old, yet new. New, yet old ....
Imagine the "old" potters, with no knowledge of distant
traditions and quite possibly little knowledge of potters
outside their own county, preparing, settling, drying and
throwing their clays; making wares which, in function,
expressed the needs of their communities. Imagine the
destruction of such communities, and the consequent
dissipation of craftsmen during the migration of country
people into the towns to supply the rapidly enlarging
industrial revolution, meaning that the crafts, as an
expression of those needs, lost their vitality, their self-
integrity. Culture arose out of those needs. Their loss,
therefore, signified the loss of culture. When that died,
the living traditions were severed from their roots.
Originality decayed (origin: . . . . from the source).
Tradition wilted and died also or became totally
unresourceful as e.g. in the modern Wedgwood and
Delft factories, hardly definable shadows of their former
selves. The craftsman of those early communities had no
one to impress, no exhibitions to launch, no reputation
to nurse. But he had his work, his craft with which he
could develop, unheeded, an inner relationship. Such a
relationship was between the Heart (the source) and the
Hand. The very nature of the work at that time would
demand this relationship if the man was to remain
content. Between himself and the process of making lay
the 'development area' of the pre-industrial craftsman.
The deepening of his understanding of 'the one on the
wheel', of the subtleties of his materials, where they were
dug and how they were dug, the souring, the intricate
sensations and delicate movements learnt through long
hours on the wheel, his feelings and insights
Intellectually, we now call the work of those men
'unselfconscious'. The identity of self, as 'I', was lost,
since any self-assertion was subordinated in the heart/hand
relationship. The 'I' bowed in the making of the pot, and
not at its final acclamation! Such products were naturally
original, individual and free (individual in the proper
sense of being undivided). We are conscious of this,
because of the head.
Twentieth century man, and the twentieth century
craftsman in particular, has entered life through quite a
different door. He has been educated or conditioned to
use his head at the expense of his heart. (Hence the
popularity of John Macmurray's books and lectures in the
thirties. Freedom in Society, Reason & Emotion and
Persons in Relation essentially expound that Christianity
has become Stoicism i.e. the separation, and subsequent
deceit to ourselves, of thought and feeling and they a re
an attempt to understand and redress the balance). This
imbalance of the intellectual importance, the conceptual
basis of our understanding of life, gives us, in our
relationship with our work a perceptual difference in
vision, inner or outer. We are conscious of why we are
doing what we are doing rather than doing it because it
needs doing. We are, as someone said, intellectual
revivalists. Instead of the relationship being between the
craftsman's being and the process (heart/hand), it is now
between the process and the finished product (hand/head).
The emphasis has shifted from the process of making and
inner fulfilment, to the product and personal
aggrandisement. Self-effacement and self-assertion,
negative and positive, jiriki and tariki, yes and no. The
shift is very evident in our work and attitudes (the
fashionable negation of value judgements i.e. the heart).
Anything goes, the more "original and individual" the
better if only they were! What we are really saying
is that any idea goes. But what we fail to see, is that the
pot can then only be as good as the idea and unjustly
limited thereby. Contrast Leach's "The pot is the man"
with "The pot is the idea". Conceptual art must be limited
since concepts can only function within duality, and
therein lies the gates of hell and the prison of the heart.
Work made from this conceptual and highly self-conscious
premis cannot be individual and free but, conversely,
individual and bound. Sadly the majority of art colleges
fall within this trap, producing intellectual toys, negating
the very humanity which gave them cause to be. This
negation holds many pitfalls; resentment, envy, gimmicry,
idosyncracy and supercilious pedantry on the ad nauseum
argument of pottery v sculpture v painting etc., etc., etc..
They are all languages of human expression, but it is not
enough to learn the grammar. We must learn to know
those who are eloquent and those who, rarer still speak
without speaking. The quiet austerity and spirituality of
a Leach; the sensuality and humanity of a Cardew, the
generosity and humility of a Katharine Pleydell-Bouverie
and the simplicity and directness of a Batterham. "There
are no major and minor arts, only major and minor artists".
However having established that we have been brought
up differently, have "come through another door" we
cannot conscientiously rest if we bemoan the fact and
wallow in an over-romanticised nostalgia, by slamming it
in the face of reality. Perhaps the function of the modern
day potter is to try and strike a balance, a balance which
in Japan is expressed as Jiriki, Tariki; Self-power, other-
power (something akin to Cardew's deliciously understated
'the something other'). Being aware, we will have some
sort of aesthetic, however nebulous, which in itself will
have a greater or lesser degree of temperamental
ecclecticism. We will consciously choose from those
countries and cultures, forms, textures and glazes which,
because of their choosing, give us an indication of that
which will express ourselves best. This is healthy, albeit
easy to abuse. And yet at the same time as we extract
what we will from these divergent traditions we hear talk
that tradition is dead, old hat, the concern only of the
"two-bit" functional potters! Tradition is the living and
inexhaustible form of the Source (that which Yanagi in
the "Unknown Craftsman" prefers to call the Spring). It
is interesting to note that in the modern tendency to
reject the anthropocentric and irrational aspects of the
traditions of the heart, we have evident, in compensation,
conceptual creations of the 'natural order' e.g. seashells,
fungi, rocks etc. We should be careful here not to
intellectually misinterpret Aristotle. "Art imitates
nature" does not mean that art should imitate the
appearance of nature, but the nature of nature. The
heart is the centre of human experience and yet we must
use the head to transcribe that which we feel. But the
head must serve the heart as Dag Hammersjold aptly put
it "How humble the tool when praised for what the Hand
has done".
Some years ago I was somewhat disturbed by something
which Hamada is supposed to have uttered when asked if
he would go to America and teach (he was then quite
young). He declined and on being asked why, he replied
'I wish to start a pottery in the country and lose my tail'.
And I wondered how he could lose something that
evidently he hadn't got? Being now a little more versed in
the eastern delight of paradox, perhaps he meant that he
wished to get rid of his 'ego' or 'self' which he knew
existed only as a mental construct or 'bind'. This bind is
only too real to most of us and yet it has no real existence.
And when more recently Hamada said 'a good pot is born
and not made' I realized that he was saying something to
the effect that if we didn't lose our 'tails', good pots
would be out of our reach. Cezanne said something
similar 'I wish to paint this landscape while I'm not here'.
In other words, and in eastern terms, 'a good pot is born
and not made', means that it is directly conceived from
that which is Unborn. One has lost one's tail sufficiently
for the creative force to come into play without the
hindrance of our self-opinionated, ideologically
conditioned, little egos. This process of emptying, fulfills
us.
For me, pottery is unthinkable without very close
attention to tradition. We cannot dismiss thousands of
years of human love and expression by delineating an
arbitrary line whereby tradition is no longer valid. True
tradition is Vital, it is alive, it is life mirrored in an
anthropocentric form. Why? In order that another
anthropod may benefit thereby! Through this life we can
give love, or indifference or hate, that is our choice, for it
is not a concern of life itself, just as the sun, from its
absolute point of vision knows nothing of shadows, and
cares not, for 'man stands in his own shadow and wonders
why it is dark'. A pot, a poem, a painting or a little piece
of cloth, which speaks to us over the centuries, has shown
us in its very form, the formless, the Unborn, the Heart,
the Source. And we in our turn try to precipitate, give
meaningful form to this formlessness whose language is
written in the work of artisans from all countries at all
times and whose vehicle is tradition. The success of this
operation will depend on our ability to get out of the
way, to allow the free play of the heart, that inexhaustible
reservoir of growth.
Old forms; yet new. New; yet old .... I hope we get more walnuts this year.