“New” vintage Japanese haori.

I am always amazed at the quality of the vintage haori and kimono I come across. This one is no exception. Black base with Dianthus japonicus in fine detail throughout the whole piece. I looked up “nadeshiko” which is the name in Japanese and only came up with “Pink”. I didn’t know there is a flower named pink. A whole family of them in fact.

Another thing about this haori that gives a lot of insight into Japan is the fact that it has never been worn. I come across a lot of kimono and haori that are “new” vintage. What happens a lot of times is either the piece was given as a present and never worn or taken with the woman when she moved out of her parents home to get married. Traditionally she would take a whole house full of furniture and the tansu, dressers, would be filled with kimono and other clothes. Many of them never to be worn. A living tradition as it is still practiced in the countryside.

The right price.

I went to a shop that carries antique kimonos today. It is run by the second daughter of a major figure in the antique fabrics world in Japan. The first daughter runs a shop in Tokyo while the third daughter is still learning the trade. The mother and father of the three run a shop in front of the oldest wooden building in the world, Horyuji temple. The shop I visited is directly in front of the train station in Horyuji.

The first thing I noticed was the beauty of the shop. It was just redone a couple of months ago. There was incense burning and the overall effect was of a very well-run, nicely decorated small shop. I would guess it is about ten tatami mats in all, roughly 15 square meters.

The selection was really nice. Limited but very nice. There were  maybe 40-50 pieces total in the shop, kimonos, obis, purses, etc. Very old pieces to post war but probably nothing newer than 1955 or so. A lot of antique fabric swatches, enough to make any lover of fabric drool.

The next thing I noticed was the prices. I sell antique kimono and obi on my Etsy site. I do it mainly because I like kimono and obi, less to make a profit. I saw today I am selling for less than 1/4 market price. If you look at my site you will see some great deals. I don’t think I will raise my prices but I was surprised to see how much things cost in the real world.

Iga Ueno and Shigaraki

I spent the day driving around the Iga/Ueno and Shigaraki area. I first stumbled on a guy firing a kiln while his father looked on. He was firing without any temperature reading devices. I felt much better about the condition of my kiln after seeing the condition of his kiln and  chimney. There are also pictures of his father’s work.

The second place I went is to a guy named Kyono. He does Bizen type work. The pictures are of his house. All the wood is black from smoke from a wood burning stove.

Nara Japan

I took a walk down to Nara today to ut my show notice postcards around Naramachi. It was about a 20 km. walk. I found the best display I have seen yet in a city run place. I have pictures. The base is a large square with 6 pieces in it. As you approach it tiny fish scatter around. It has live fish in the water which is about 5 cm. deep. Very interesting and neat display.

I took a rest in front of Gojunoto for about 30 minutes. The video,  here, is of a scene that suddenly appeared behind my. The priests seemed to be moving some items in the procession. There is sunlight that got into the video. Sorry about that.

What? No beef?

From next Saturday through November 22nd.  I have a show at a small gallery in Naramachi.
Lets be clear.
This is what I am supposed to be working for, shows in galleries. I have been slaving away for about 13 years, in my studio everyday of the week for the first 9 of those years. The unstated goal being shows in galleries.
I intensely dislike gallery shows. Hate is too strong of a word but they  irritate me intensely. I don’t like talking about my work. I feel like the work has to speak for itself. When someone walks into a show and feels something about the work, good or bad, something important has taken place. A transfer of energy. I started out with a hard lump of clay, a pile of ash. After a series of movements those have been changed into something that made someone feel something. A transferring of energy from something I did to them. If an emotional response isn’t a sparking of energy then I am wrong. It would be too simple to say that is why I make things. Too simple and basically wrong. I make things because that is the only time I feel like I am doing what I am here for. Strange, no? I do a number of things everyday. I am a father, husband, am responsible for the financial well-being of my family. The only time I really feel like I am doing what I am here for is when I am in the studio. That feeling runs through to the firing of the work. After I am done firing and open the kiln that feeling evaporates and I am left with  things I have to sell. Completely different feeling from the state I am in when I am making things. I would like to say I find purpose in selling, in promoting my work but it simply isn’t true.
My ceramics teacher has a house full of works by Picasso, very nice furniture, etc. I asked him why he spent his money on those things. Cheeky of me to ask I suppose but I like finding contradictions and questioning them. He was after all a student cell leader in the Japanese communist movement in the early 1970s. He said that after a show, when the work has all disappeared and it is time to go home all he has to show is a pile of cash. He would rather take home a work of art instead. I should put here that his wife disagreed with him on this point, intensely.
I understood what he was saying then to a degree but it is something I have digested. After the digestion my take is I of course like that people like what I make enough to buy my work but I am in it only for the process of making things. I am not some starry-eyed hippie boy by any stretch of the imagination. Just ask my closest friends. They will confirm that. But in this regard I have utter disregard for the selling of my work.
I don’t need to be told this won’t work, this way of thinking. I am trying to find a way to sell that will match my personality. Selling on the Internet, strangely enough, has given me a lot of satisfaction. Maybe it is because the work speaks most forcefully through that medium. I am not opposed to selling either. It isn’t that aspect. I haven’t eaten meat since 1987. I only starting eating fish the day I came to Japan in 1994. It is always anticlimactic when asked why. I just  don’t like meat, that is all. Nothing political. I always think it would be nicer for those that ask me if I had a grand, possibly political reason for not eating meat but I just don’t like it. Same with selling. No grand reason, I just don’t like it.
So, I will start getting ready for the show from tomorrow.

Visitor from Australia

I had a nice visit with Steve Harrison and Janine King from Australia yesterday. Steve  and Janine fire a wood burning kiln and an eletric kiln in NSW using all local materials. Very interesting work.

They came out to see my kiln but we spent the morning taking a walk around the village.

I enjoy getting visitors, especially if it keeps me away from work I don’t want to do.

Village festival.

Yesterday was the annual Yamazoe Village Festival. Think very rural. I only spent about 1 hour there, mainly to listen to the junior high school play. I took a spin around to see the shops. I prefer the beach to the mountains so even though I enjoy going to these kinds of festivals and find them a wealth of information on how Japan works at the same time I would rather be at the beach. I think if I lived at the beach I could daydream most days away and not get any work done. Living in the mountains as I do only focuses me on my work which is a good thing.

Nara Craft Fair, 10-31-09 and 11-01-09

I went to the Nara Aozora craft fair over this past weekend. It is the fourth time I have been there and probably the last. There really isn’t any selection process as far as the organizers trying to have a unified theme or overall strategy. If you are able to lug your crates to the site I think you are able to participate.

I went with my wife, she was selling jewelery she makes, see here. She is a very good seller and sold 20 times the amount I did. I have a lot to learn from her. One thing I noticed is she is very excited about what she sells and isn’t afraid to share that excitement with those who come up to look. I on the other hand am more excited about the process of making and firing and have a certain disconnect with the object that results so appear somnambulant next to her. It is easy to write and to dissect that I have that quality but even easier to say it is something to change if I want to sell a lot of my work. My next chance at selling is a gallery show I have coming up from the 14th. of November in a gallery in Nara.

Arts and craft fair marketing, or, what’s with the whistle man.

I wrote about him before. I learned more this weekend. Not enough to teach, but enough to keep me occupied for a while.

The pictures are the view you would have had you passed by his booth at about 3:50 pm on Sunday, 10-25-09. It was like this till about 4:30 pm. The fair ended at 4:00 sharp. Everyone around was busily striking tent, me included. The whistle guy was serenely making the money for his hotel that night, gas and highways fees.

So what is his secret? That is really the question. Standing in my booth all day I saw a couple of the whistles he sells hanging around the necks of children. I commented to the parents about their purchase from the whistle guy. Without fail they replied with enthusiasm. Either they had just bought it or in a couple of cases they had taken their whistle, purchased a few years ago, to have maintenance. Let me sharpen what he is selling a little further in order to make the case that what he is really selling isn’t whistles. The starter whistle is about 3 cm. long, high-pitched with only an end hole to modulate the pitch to an even higher pitch. Read, very annoying to those around. But the parents and children alike are very excited about these products. A step up from the starter is a whistle that can mimic the recorder all Japanese school children learn on. There is a deluxe model that does all kinds of wonderous things I am sure. Price wise they start at 1,200 yen up to 3,800 yen.

So, the lesson I take away from him this year is of consistency, service, a solid product that people want.

Consistency in the sense that I think he builds up an audience of fans over the course of a couple of years. If the fair is a flop my guess is it would have to be a flop a number of years for him to quit, at least according to what I have heard from him.

Service in the sense of after sale maintenance mainly. I have consistently heard that as a point of excitement or endorsement from some of his customers I have engaged in conversation.

A solid product. He makes whistles. Very pedestrian. In fact kind of the perfect product to study. If you can build a tribe of whistle fans I put forth you can build a tribe of any kind of fans. I am of course giving short shrift to all those who want to belabor the point of the universality of music, etc.

The thing I hear most often from artists selling work is that the work doesn’t fit the audience, read the customers are not able to understand the work.

That the high sellers have sold out.

That they, the high sellers have a great product and ….?.

The customers don’t want to spend.

I am only here to get contacts, not to sell.

I am an artiste.  I guess the implication is that sales are below the person.

During this craft fair I made my mantra, used selectively, only said in my head, “You should buy it.” I was surprised at how often it worked. At the least it made me smile outwardly. I have often had people come up, praise the work, comment repeatedly at how inexpensively it is priced and then walk away without purchasing anything. Armed with my mantra I found it easy to look at the whole process of these types as something to smile at.

A patial view to the booth to the left, that would have been me last year.

Whistle man from one angle.

From another angle.

The booth to the right. Notice the woman using this booth as a viewing platform.

Yamaguchi Arts and Craft Fair.

I’m back.

I left Friday night at 11:30 pm, drove through the night and got in Yamaguchi at around 6:00 am Saturday. The fair was a very nice experience. I enjoy being out and meeting Japanese people. I changed my display so it was very shibui,  in fact had people come up on a number of occasions and say just that. My favorite was when a man with a large nose came up and looked around. The kind of looking where he took off his glasses, bent down to get a good look at the shapes, knew what he was looking for. After about 10 minutes he came back and waved his wife over and said something to the effect of “Can you believe this shibuiness?” He didn’t buy anything because my sake cups weren’t big enough. Oh well, size matters.

I look at  craft fairs as marketing workshops. I learn a lot about how my work is perceived and what other people are putting out there.

What kind of people stopped and looked at my work? Lots of black and grey clothing. To break it down there were about 4 categories of people. The most common was people with a very minimalist dress sense in the sense of their color palette. Black, greys, white, maybe one accessory that had color. It isn’t nice to say but a lot of them had a pained look on their face hopefully not caused by my work. The next largest group was what looked like well to do retired couples. Think California’s Carmel by the Sea.  Most of this group didn’t buy but did give my work a good looking over which is something I appreciate. The third group was mothers, often with children, everyone in blacks and greys, maybe some shades of brown in the baby carriers. This group combined with the next group is the largest buyer as my prices are aimed at them.  The last group was fellow ceramicsts. I am the only person doing Nanban firing foolish enough to sell so cheap so a lot of people who want this style and like my work bought something from me.

I noticed a lot of people whose legs didn’t match their shoe choice and wanted to make that the theme of the photos but quickly decided there might be some problems with what is inferred so skipped it.

This year I went there with my son who is on crutches. We slept in the back of our car in the parking lot next to the venue. Bad choice since we couldn’t lift our heads up or everyone doing what ever keeps people in the respectable city of Yamaguchi up all night and in the park could see us.

Early morning Saturday.

The white string is the limit of the booths. 5 meters by 5 meters.

This man is the doppelganger of a good friend of mine, http://tommillerart.com/

Geek  information.

All distances and data are from my house to the exit in Yamaguchi.

Going.

Using Sanyo highway, no breaks.

Distance = 531

5 hours 31 minutes.

531 kilometers.

97 kilometers per hour average speed.

15.1 kilometers per liter average gas use.

5,797 yen in gas one way.

2,100 yen in highway fees.

Returning.

Using Chugokudo highway, dinner  break.

Distance = 536

5 hours 37 minutes.

536 kilometers.

99 kilometers per hour average speed.

14.9 kilometers per liter average gas use.

2,100 yen in highway fees.