Matsuzaki Sensei’s workshop

I welled as I looked over the bowls on the table, realising it is the end of the week, the end of our time in Mashiko with Matsuzaki Sensei, the end of the masterclass, the end of what we have been building up to for nearly a year. Those seminal moments when something so long anticipated comes to a close and you’re left in a very special mental place of pause. My teabowl made, carved and signed, ready to be fired before Ken Matsuzaki returns to the UK in 2 years time. I hope it goes through the anagama he designed, a mix of noborigama and his own architecture of chambers. We stand for some photos, Matsuzaki Sensei said he “had fun” and that our bowls “are teabowls” – an unianticipated and memorable compliment, but that is hard not to ascribe to a general good mood and, to my eyes, Lisa’s company. I was the last to leave the workshop, looking over to where Doi had been preparing Masuzaki Sensei’s clay, the paper window he has peformed his Punch and Judy impersonation from, passing tools through from outside, hopping up seamlessly out through the windows and back in through the doors like a refined acrobatic routine that is demanded of you being Matsuzaki Sensei’s assistant. Reiko had been standing by the door as everybody walked by her in single file, with what to me was the glowing body language of somebody who wants to be hugged. She is Ken Masuzakis English speaking daughter who had done a great deal of not only translation but refined selections of what to say to each side of the party during our trip, as cultural differences and some party members being of a non-silicate disposition, she handled our socialising after the last week with a degree of care and grace that will I’m sure be retold after our departure. I opened my arms and gave her a tight squeeze to which she cooed and confirmed she had been inviting for a while now. I had an overwhelming need to punctuate this moment somehow, not just to walk out of there but try and show Ken Matsuzaki Sensei how much we had been looking forward to meeting him, hung on his every word (sensitively translated by Reiko) and a week most of us will remember forever. I turned to him and bowed, said thank you, and tilted my hips again. The pause was just enough to give a space to that moment that it really needed. Of course this swelled up in me into a well of emotion as I stepped out into the rain, my eyes welling, my heart beaming. There is nowhere like that I have ever been, and even more to be intimately accepted into that workshop where so much incredible work had been made. Tears rolled quietly on my cheeks and everything was still in my mind and a deep gratitude in my heart. The gratitude spills over to the people I love, everyone who has loved me and had supported me getting there. Even the drops of water bubbling on the puddled ground feel vulnerable, beautiful, sentimental, and I am in love with Japan and all it has given me.