Fruit bowl: Shinrin-yoku
Fruit bowl: Shinrin-yoku
About
Built from local Shigaraki clay using the spiral technique. Woodfired at a pottery studio in the Tokoname forest, Japan, October 2025.
A fruit bowl.
10 × 20 cm (3.9 × 7.9 in)
The Making
Made with the spiral technique: a tall, narrow cylinder thrown first, scored with a fork, then stretched fast from the inside with the left hand, working against the resistance of the clay. It's a faster, more forceful version of the one-hand push, and the spiral marks it leaves can't be recreated after the fact. (Same technique as the Cup in the Ubud Forest collection.)
It carries small bright blue crystals across the surface, rare in a wood firing and only possible from a heavy ash deposit landing in just the right spot.
The Firing
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Made during three weeks at a pottery studio in the Tokoname forest, Japan, a city built on pottery, threaded by a footpath paved with broken ceramic shards and a centuries-old climbing kiln leaning into the hillside. This was my first wood firing, and the studio itself had a small, family feel, like living in a village.
The kiln was an anagama: a single-chamber, tunnel-shaped wood kiln, one of the oldest kiln types in Japan, brought over from Korea around the 5th century. This one had only a front stoke hole, no side stoking. The approach here, taught by kiln master Peter Seabridge, isn't about speed. It's about pacing: watching the thermometer, watching the chimney through a mirror in the window, and judging when to feed it again.
I worked two shifts, both mornings, about 10 hours each. In the first, the temperature climbed from 260°C to 1020°C. In the second, it rose from 1214°C to 1255°C, crossing the 1250°C mark. The kiln peaked at 1260°C. There was no reduction cooling at the end, just a long climb up and back down.
No glaze was applied to any piece. Everything you see on the surface is ash, clay body, and slip.