CHRIS PRINDL

My Japanese journey started with four childhood years in Tokyo with my family but it wasn’t until I started making pots with Toshiko Takaezu and studying Japanese again while at Princeton University that I realised how formative those years had been and how strongly I had absorbed a Japanese aesthetic. It was within two months of starting to make things in clay and finding all this forgotten Japanese in my head that I knew I wanted to go back to Japan and find an apprenticeship. So, after graduating from Princeton I headed for Japan and found an apprenticeship with Okazaki Takao in Yamagata. Okazaki-sensei himself had apprenticed for many years with Kato Tokuro, arguably the greatest Japanese potter of his generation, and was steeped in many Japanese ceramic traditions and styles, including Shino, Seto, Oribe and Yakishime. During my two years with the Okazakis I chopped an awful lot of wood, made up mountains of clay and many buckets of glazes, learned to throw properly and how to build and fire a variety of kilns. Okazaki worked in a wide range of styles, which still I emulate, and he also introduced me to firing kilns with wood which has remained a passion ever since. Despite Okazaki’s pedigree in many traditional styles of Japanese ceramics, I found myself more drawn towards other classic oriental glazes as my career started to take off and have invested much time and energy working on many different glazes, including  Oxbloods and Celadons. I have also long enjoyed old salt-glazed pots, especially old German Bartmannkrug with the beardy dudes and the medallions, and, when I built my first fast fire wood kiln in Cornwall 20 years ago, adding salt into the mix seemed an obvious decision. My wood/salt journey has proved very rewarding, and, after firing a second larger kiln with Paul Jackson for 15 years, I built wood/salt kiln #3 last year, my Double-Barrelled Pyromantic Phoenix Kiln, the largest and best looking kiln I’ve yet made. Beyond the sheer exhausting thrill of firing with wood, the most exciting thing has been the serendipitous influence the ash and salt have on the pieces, forcing me to give up any notion of total control over the finished product!

I have been working in Trebyan Forge now since 2000, and it has been an inspirational place in which to create with all its space and light. Working with several different claybodies and three different kilns – medium electric, large gas and even larger wood and salt – I have been working on increasingly monumental jars while also producing the finest possible pieces in porcelain – power and delicacy. My wife and muse, Susannah, helps me with many important preparatory jobs from weighing out glazes to pugging the clay.

I also have a great love of music and listen to a lot of chamber music and jazz. I’m lucky enough to play the viola in various Cornish orchestras and in chamber groups with friends. In another life, and with rather more talent, I would have happily been in a professional string quartet.