The Unknown Craftsman A Japanese Insight Into Beauty

[Ariel Wascom]

I love the book. It is so informative and has given me insight into many aspects of Japan. The text is easy to read and provides a great deal of information on the beauty of crafts as seen through the eyes of the author. It has prompted me to research many of the interesting facts contained within.

JTA stands behind the quality of every one of our products and know that we offer our customers the best woodworking tools possible, whether their application be for students, enthusiasts or tradespeople.

This book challenges the conventional ideas of art and beauty. What is the value of things made by an anonymous craftsman working in a set tradition for a lifetime? What is the value of handwork? Why should even the roughly lacquered rice bowl of a Japanese farmer be thought beautiful? The late Soetsu Yanagi was the first to fully explore the traditional Japanese appreciation for "objects born, not made."

Mr. Yanagi sees folk art as a manifestation of the essential world from which art, philosophy, and religion arise and in which the barriers between them disappear. The implications of the author's ideas are both far-reaching and practical.

Soetsu Yanagi is often mentioned in books on Japanese art, but this is the first translation in any Western language of a selection of his major writings. The late Bernard Leach, renowned British potter and friend of Mr. Yanagi for fifty years, has clearly transmitted the insights of one of Japan's most important thinkers. The seventy-six plates illustrate objects that underscore the universality of his concepts. The author's profound view of the creative process and his plea for a new artistic freedom within tradition are especially timely now when the importance of craft and the handmade object is being rediscovered.

This article is the result of my researches on the cultural heritage of traditional ceramics and the artisan pedagogy. The main problem faced was the educational praxis of the ceramics craft in a traditional community and the ways of teaching and learning handicraft work in artisanal communities. The study comprised a phenomenological investigation of the daily life of this society, and its aims were to reveal and understand how the knowledge of pottery is shared by successive generations; which are the methodologies that contribute to perpetuating the ancient secrets of the craft; how manual forms of artistic creation coexist with contemporary technologies. The ethnographic basis of the research was the traditional community of Maragogipinho, a small district in the city of Aratupe, in Bahia, a genuine environment of ceramics handicraft, where, since the 17th century, men and women are daily engaged in the production of clay objects. The data were collected from direct observation, field diary entries, recorded interviews and photographic records between 2012 and 2015. The results obtained evidenced the immensely immaterial collection of individual and collective knowledge that coexist in this village of masters and guardians of the ceramics craft. The pedagogy of master craftsmen, or artisanal pedagogy, based on ancestral values, is effective in practice, transcending it towards the spheres of ethics and aesthetics, in the sense of fostering in the subjects the sense of belonging to a recognized social body, by means of an artistic craft that constantly converses with the tradition and the emergence of modernity.

Este artigo fruto de uma pesquisa sobre o patrimnio cultural da cermica tradicional e a pedagogia artes. O principal problema que se buscou enfrentar diz respeito prxis educativa do ofcio cermico em uma comunidade tradicional e os modos de ensino e aprendizagem em territrios de trabalho artesanal. O estudo compreendeu uma investigao fenomenolgica do dia a dia dessa sociedade, teve por objetivos descortinar e compreender como os conhecimentos da cermica so partilhados pelas geraes, as metodologias que contribuem para perpetuar os antigos segredos de ofcio, de que modo formas manuais de criao artstica convivem com tecnologias contemporneas. A base etnogrfica da pesquisa localiza-se na comunidade tradicional de Maragogipinho, pequeno distrito da cidade de Aratupe, na Bahia, ambiente genuno da cermica, onde, desde o sculo XVII, homens e mulheres dedicam-se cotidianamente produo de objetos de barro. Os dados foram coletados a partir de observao direta, dirio de campo, entrevistas gravadas e registros fotogrficos entre 2012 e 2015. Os resultados obtidos evidenciam o incomensurvel acervo imaterial de conhecimentos individuais e coletivos que coexistem nessa aldeia de mestres, de guardies da cermica. A pedagogia dos mestres-artesos, ou pedagogia artes, fundada em valores ancestrais, se efetiva na prtica, transcendendo-a para as esferas da tica e da esttica, no sentido de alimentar nos sujeitos o senso de pertencimento a um corpo social reconhecido, por meio de um ofcio artstico que dialoga constantemente com a tradio e a emergncia da modernidade.

The artist that cuts the wood, hammers the metal, molds the clay, carves the stone block, he brings to us the past of man, an ancient man, without whom we would not be here. Is it not admirable to see him standing, among us, in the midst of a mechanical age, this obstinate survivor of the age of the hands? Centuries have passed by him without altering his deep life, without making him renounce his ancient ways of discovering the world and inventing it.

In the vast Latin American territory, since the conquest until the present day, a great diversity of cultures spread out, giving rise to a multifaceted symbolic reality, rich in artistic expressions, transmitted especially by oral tradition. Of these manifestations, we highlight handicraft as an activity that carries values that mark and distinguish identity traits in traditional societies, in which it plays an important role in ensuring cohesion in the social fabric.

The handicraft commonly practiced in the small villages ensures and consecrates the sharing of knowledge between the generations; the manual activity strengthens the social relations, engendering principles of solidarity. From the mainstay of the family and from neighborhood cooperation to the sense of belonging to the community as a whole, craft practices are woven into the constitution of life itself.

Artisans 3 3 In several sections of the text, I use the expression craftsman to also refer to the female artisan, master and teacher. are simple people who, without having any active part in economic policy decisions, end up being swallowed by the economic disarrays that separate them from their own roots and from the socio-cultural meanings of their work. In order to survive and serve the market, many of them abandon their ancestral practices, cease to create to produce instead empty, extrinsic objects, without personality, as was so well expressed by the Brazilian craftsman Z do Carmo:

The impoverished, the artisans work tirelessly to obtain an exiguous income, which barely ensures the sustenance of their families. For those who depend on handicrafts today, in Brazil and in globalized Latin America, the ways of survival rest in a hazy, uncertain horizon; artisanal production still penetrates timidly into the niches of the global market, competing with industrial products.

Among the handicraft modalities, pottery is an immemorial trade, always present in the daily activities of societies. Entire civilizations in all parts of the world have produced and are still producing ceramic artifacts for the most varied functions, from the simple to the complex ones: the construction of walls, floor and roof of the dwellings; containment and storage of water; food cooking; offerings to the god; burial of the dead. In addition to functionality, ceramic handicraft gives humanity nourishment from the most elemental dreams of earth, water, fire and air. To shape forms in the clay revive and satisfy the inexorable earthly desire of original creation ( BACHELARD, 2003 BACHELARD , Gaston . A terra e os devaneios do repouso . So Paulo : Martins Fontes , 2003 . ).

This article reflects on the collection of artistic knowledge related to ceramics of a traditional Brazilian community and how this knowledge is perpetuated through informal teaching and learning processes. It highlights and appreciates the production of knowledge through non-conventional pedagogical practices, in order to recognize its relevance and value and ensure its continuity. It also intends to bring elements to contribute to the debate on the safeguarding of immaterial cultural heritage, especially concerning handcraft education and, more specifically, the pedagogical processes relating to traditional pottery.

Although the research focused on only one social group, Maragogipinho can be considered as an emblematic case of a traditional community that constitutes itself through the work with ceramics. The village has about three thousand inhabitants and 150 potteries, that is, about one pottery for every 20 people. A distinctive aspect of this artisanal production is that the pieces are created by at least four hands: the ceramic activity is totally shared between men and women. Men extract the clay, knead it, make the artifacts on century-old wood-turners, moved with the feet, and burn them in wood-burning ovens; while women produce the finish, polishing and painting the pieces.

The historical records of ceramic activity in the region of Maragogipinho go back to the seventeenth century when potteries began to be installed near the sugar mills and the Jesuit schools of the Recncavo Baiano for the provision of crockery, bricks and tiles ( PEREIRA, 1957 PEREIRA , Carlos Jos da Costa . A cermica popular da Bahia . Salvador : Progresso , 1957 . , p. 12). Nowadays, artisans are proud to proclaim that Maragogipinho was considered by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) as one of the most expressive centers of ceramic production in Latin America.

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