From the house where Jason Wason lives, the boundaries of land
and the markings made on that coast by the sea can be seen in a
ninety degree arc. The Cornish peninsular of Penwith, including the
Isles of Scilly, Land’s End, St Just and the Botallack cliffs and tin mines
are all clearly visible from Jason’s studio windows.
In 1971 Jason started a community in the valleys north of Dumfries
by Corsock on a smallholding of thirty-two acres. It was called
Woodfoot. It did exactly that; lay at the foot of a wood. It was there that
we first met. Jason’s earlier extensive travelling in the Middle East, Asia
and North Africa had introduced him to the distinction between the
function and ceremononial use of the pottery of those cultures and it
occurred to him that the making of pots would enable him to explore this
area as a craft. He began to throw on a kick wheel that he had built
himself, and by the time he left in 1976 he was a competent thrower.
He then decided that if he wished to proceed, he should work at a
studio, where he could be shown the intricacies of the thought that
informed pottery. So he worked at Bernard Leach’s pottery in St Ives from
1977 until three years after Leach’s death in 1979. In 1982 he set up
his own studio, above the cliffs near St Just.
The initial act of making a pot has always involved the collection of
a dense malleable medium, thumped into an airless lump. The clay itself
belongs to the planet and is formed by planetary processes and it is
only when the potter lays hands on the material and swells it up into a
form on the wheel, or builds it, coiling the rolled out serpents into a
vessel that he or she transforms the lump.
The erosion and decomposition of the earth’s surface is a continuous
and ongoing process. Over many millennia, igneous rock, in mountain
ranges is permeated with rainwaters that freeze and break the rock into
small particles that find their way into fast-flowing mountain streams.
These streams feed rivers that carry the particles to the coastal plains
where the velocity of the water slows and releases its load. Here the
clay beds are formed, and depending on the journey the rock has
taken, the colour and texture of the clay is established. This clay varies
from region to region on the planet. Some fine-grained silk, others
coarse, pitted with impurities, with different minerals, different characteristics
and with differing effectiveness – they all struggle to achieve a
single purpose.
For thousands of years the potter’s task has been to turn these broken
mountains into decorative pleasure, utilitarian function or ritual object.
In the Tao Te Ching, Lao-tzu describes the nature of the void thus:
We put thirty spokes together and call it a wheel;
But it is on the space where there is nothing that
the
utility of the wheel depends.
We turn clay to make a vessel;
But it is on the space where there is nothing that
the utility of the vessel depends …
Therefore just as we take advantage of what is,we should recognize the utility of what is not.
Jason Wason’s pots are familiar with this role. Indeed all round Jason’s
house in the garden and hedges that mark the boundaries of the
surrounding fields are pieces of abandoned pot, sometimes largely
undamaged, sometimes a large shard that had been unable to take the
thermal shock, dropped or damaged accidentally; they are familiar and
therefore ‘safe’ because they are broken, fragile, but even in this
condition, a demonstration of their apparent failure, they talk of
something else.
Wason’s pottery has been building the balance between interior and
exterior for the thirty odd years he has been making pots. It is as if he
wishes to capture in the form and calligraphy on the exterior of the piece
the character and personality of what the form embraces. This relationship
is the component that gives Wason’s pots their emotional and
spiritual punch. They are difficult to ignore.
This reference to ‘balance’ is not just the way in which the finished
pot ‘sits’. The tension and balance of ceramics is also inherent in its
required utility. Entering and then enduring fire is an aspect of pottery
similar with other processes, such as steel foundry, jewellery, bronze
casting, yet with pots, there is, during this crucial stage, no communication
between the potter and his or her creation. The potter turns away
closing the lid or door of the kiln, resigned, unable now to interfere.
Glass is watched as it is spun in the flame, the jeweller hammers out
fire-softened forms, but for the potter there is only concealment and
mystery. In Japan, where Wason has worked on many occasions, the
kiln master places a small pinch of rice and a glass of Saki and,
together with an effigy of a kiln god, the work is surrendered to the
flame. Fire takes no prisoners. Pieces are often destroyed by this
thermal hammer; their emergence after the fire is anticipated with
tensions and expectancies that also empower the form.
Wason’s pots have about them this ring of uncertainty. Those that
survive occasionally bring an interesting message from these inhospitable
lands.
The surface of the pots are incised with flicking rhythms or
restrained fish scales or scrubbed lines akin to the multiple stave of a
musical score. They circle the pot or sometimes appear (in the large
open bowls) on the inside only. There are shield studs or studs like
those found on medieval door furniture, ominous, masculine,
announcing an intent. Then there are large white pots, smoothed with
rubbing and scraping until the surface appears to be geologically
eroded on which Jason has placed two small breasts. The pot
becomes fecund, its dark interior full of potency. The large white forms
carry something within it, intimating birth. These are powerful ancient
symbols and he marks them as such. In a sense they have already
been used and we inherit them after the journey is over and they are
at rest.
This small pot contains, it seems to me, all the ingredients of Wason’s
previous decade of work, now matured as it were, into a final
declaration. Too subtle to be a manifesto yet able to thread together
all his concerns in the slow deliberate exploration of form and space
over the years, this pot triumphs in a simple, precise, wordless display
of elegance and meaning. It measures roughly 14cm high and 20cm
across its widest point. The centre of gravity is low and squat and the
small chamfered foot allows its form to rest slightly above the surface;
too heavy to float yet it sits up, separated.
The bowl itself is circular but the opening is oval.This contradiction
between the circular belly and the slightly flared opening gives it a
feeling of having been brought from a ritual, roughly made, a vessel
for ash or incense; unexplained and ancient. The lip of the rim has a
patina like emulsified resin, it is crinkled and worn almost like leather.
There is a lightly incised zig zag pattern carved into the lower section.
Two small studs, opposite each other, below the rim immediately
transform it again, adding an intention, an objective decoration that
now refers it more to an object of display rather than utility. This
building up of small ambiguous signs, an opening at odds with the
body, a patina like leather and two symmetric studs make one wonder
whether this is old or new, significant, insignificant or open to interpretation.
Finally, round the middle of the bowl a crumpled fleck of gold
sheet seems to have been applied rather like gold leaf. It is uneven
and pitted and in many places the black body of clay shows through.
This final garnish, as the oxygen in his gas kiln was reduced, forced
the fire to search for any oxygen that remained within the mineral
body of the clay. It began devouring itself and the oxides burst onto
the surface. Molten and welted with sudden richness and colour.
Something completely new is happening here. This vessel does not
have the worked surfaces that are one of Wason’s trademarks. Instead
it delivers a new message. Firstly it is very bold and large. The flanks
of the piece are smooth and the power comes from a completely
different quarter. The small studs and lugs that once carried the effect
of delicate introspection and age have here given way to iron-like
holding bars and thick, coned, tripod feet that carry the weight. It has
a utilitarian feel because of its two-inch-wide pouring lip, yet it cannot
be used as a jug. Is this vessel for gruel or molten silver? It says
‘palace’ or ‘temple’ or ‘ritual’. Another thing has taken place.
Throughout the last thirty years, Wason has built a language in his
ceramics that explores the residues of empires he came into contact
with on his travels in the late sixties and early seventies, and he has
gradually pulled to the surface (quite literally) of his unconscious the
values held by those peoples and cultures. He has adapted them for
his own ends, but it has essentially been an exploration. Now it seems
with these new forms that a surprising thing has happened. Having
made explicit in his work the cultural relativity of his own place and
time and the link between the ancient and the modern, he has been
forced to make a re-evaluation. These new forms have acquired the
logical presence of this long search, as if he had come to end of one
part of an evaluation, the form itself has now proceeded to ask him to
examine another deeper aspect, its archetype.
These new pieces are on the border of sculpture.
Robert Hartford
August 2008