SWITZERLAND-Returning Home

Back home again to the pottery studio in Switzerland,
to the place where she was born, the place where Evi Kienast formed this chawan by hand; here in this beautiful studio in Winterthur.
And...not so far from the school where my brother was a new teacher in the 1920's.
That was before e=mc2, before the fascist horror stories in the world,
before the atomic energy research, before "the bombs had to fall." That was before me, and Bob Dylan. Probably before most of us.

For a very long time,  strongly inspired by the first chawans made by Sen Rikyu and Chojiro in the last years of the 16th Century in Kyoto, Evi's first chawan for the 21st Century and the centrepiece of her exhibitions in 2000 and 2001 was this piece.
Polishing this tea bowl again and again; looking into this tea bowl again and again; she glimpsed the entire kosmos in her hands. But as she said many times:  "Not for sale. This one is for Jack."  A wedding present and first used  for the first offering of  "A Bowl of Tea for Peace into the Four Directions,"  at the chapel of Terra Vecchio  (the Ancient Village) in Rasa.  A Bowl of Tea for Hiromi. And now years later, back to the place of her firing. Bruhlberg is one of the seven mountains in Winterthur; an historic place of fire. Bruhl=screaming, crying. Berg=mountain.  Bruhlberg became the name of that mountain long ago in the middle-ages, when the local people forced their Jewish neighbours to climb up that high place, and  then lighted fires.  The mountain burned, and all the while the good people listened to the screams of young and old.  What did they hear when the screams stopped? When the fires too died down? What did they hear when they listened to their own hearts?  Maybe we have come a long way from such days of cruelty and no-respect for people who are different (or maybe, not so different). Yes, we can flip our own negative karma, and the negative karma of the world around us.

Today on this same mountain, Evi also makes fire, and the result is chawans for the Tea-House
or for your kitchen, or living room, or your practice room. Holding one of her chawans, we return to the realm of our own one true heart.
In the practice of Chado, this is called Wa-Kei-Sei-Jaku  (Harmony-Respect-Purity-Tranquility).  And sometimes we just say: "Tea makes people happy."
And please join us for our next event in Switzerland:  "KOSMOS" goes to the "Sounds of Peace into the Four Directions."  A concert on September 6, in this small church of Veltheim.  Not so far from Evi's workshop. Or my brother's first school.

    Look for more information about Evi, about Tee-Art Seminars, about  "Sounds of Peace into the Four Directions" at  www.raku-art.ch  and about  Gallery Werkstatt-Laden at  www.werkstatt-laden.ch