It was 6 a.m. on a cold winter morning in Arita.
I had been invited to present my work to a small group gathered for a Rotary Club breakfast. We sat around tables, eating curry and rice—the kind of quiet, early meeting where conversations feel both intimate and slightly distant.
I remember feeling unprepared—not in terms of content, but in headspace.
Part of the residency is exchange. You show, you speak, you explain. But that morning, I found it difficult to talk about the work in a structured way. Something felt unresolved.
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As I spoke, my thoughts kept drifting elsewhere.
To places I had worked in before ceramics. To environments shaped by instability, where control is something people try to construct, protect, and hold onto—often without success. And more recently, to the images and stories emerging from areas affected by armed conflict—situations where systems of control—political, territorial, human—collapse or are imposed with force.
In that moment, something became clearer.
That my process is, in many ways, about the release of control.
And that, in an ideal world, if we were able—collectively—to let go of this need to dominate, to impose, to control at all costs, perhaps many of these conflicts—and their consequences on civilian lives—could be avoided.
It made me question what it means to speak about “process,” about “practice,” in isolation from those realities.
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Later that day, back in the studio, I continued working.
Porcelain on the wheel. Trimming. Preparing surfaces. The familiar rhythm returned. And then, as always, the shift: placing the pieces into the saggar.
Inside, I layered organic materials—dried grasses, woodchips, fragments gathered from the garden—alongside minerals and oxides. Elements that would burn, react, disappear.
At that point, the process changes completely.
What had been controlled becomes uncertain.
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Working in Arita carries a particular weight. The history of porcelain here is one of refinement, precision, and mastery—a pursuit of clarity and perfection developed over centuries.
Saggar firing moves against that current.
Within the closed container, smoke, ash, and vaporized materials move unpredictably. They mark the surface in ways I cannot fully direct. No two pieces emerge the same. Some surfaces darken, others hold soft traces of color, or sharp, almost violent marks left by combustion.
The kiln is no longer a tool.
It becomes an active force.
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What I realized, standing there in the studio after that morning, was that this process reflects something deeper than technique.
It mirrors a tension I have encountered before:
The desire to control—to shape outcomes, to protect what matters—and the reality that there are forces beyond that control. Forces that alter, disrupt, or erase.
In the saggar, this tension exists in a contained, material way. In the world, it unfolds on a much larger and more complex scale.
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This is not to compare the two directly.
But the act of letting go—of accepting that not everything can be directed—feels connected.
You prepare the best you can. You act with care and intention. And then, there is a point where you must allow the process to unfold on its own terms.
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Opening the saggar is always a moment of uncertainty.
There is no preview. The result is revealed all at once. Sometimes it aligns with what I imagined. Often, it does not.
But what remains carries a kind of honesty.
Not perfection, but evidence.
A surface that holds the memory of what has passed through it.
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That morning, sitting over curry and rice, I struggled to explain my work.
Looking back, I think this is what I was trying to articulate:
That beyond form and technique, this practice is about navigating the space between control and its absence—
between intention and outcome,
between what we shape, and what shapes us in return.
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Each piece is not just an object.
It is a trace.
An echo of fire, time, and the moment where control is released.
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Explore the collection: Echoes of Fire – Arita Series
Read the next episode: Inside the Kiln: Encountering Arita Porcelain Through Fire