tajimi

Today I went to Tajimi city in Gifu to visit a gallery/shop/cafe 'galerie momogusa' in the middle of mountains. It is a beautiful place by a potter Masanobu Ando and his wife. They moved an 100-year-old house from another city to this beautiful place and transformed it into a gallery. Their work is beautiful but also the house and the trees in the garden are stunning. There is so much care in the details and I felt as if I came to a tea house.

There was a pot waiting for us at the door made by a potter Koichi Uchida. He is our local potter who's gone international. His exhibition of 'Made in Japan' will come to Paris and somewhere in Germany. (It's not an exhibition of his pots but that of his collection of things that is inspiring him.) Please check it out.

We have less houses made of wood because of the way we developed earthquake engineering. This kind of house needs a lot of daily care and maintenance but has a soft feel you don't get from concrete houses. The shift of material from wood to concrete caused some problems. We have a lot of cedar mountains that woodcutters no longer come in, which gives us hay fever. We import cheaper wood, some of these can be cut illegally and leaves environmental and economic problems to South East Asia and South America. We have less craftsman who has know-how...

We're trying to use our forest as a part of recovery from the damage by the earthquake, which I think is great. I hope they rebuild beautiful towns...!

今日は岐阜は多治見にあるギャルリ百草に行ってきました。陶芸家安藤雅信さんが愛情を持って作られた場所です。細部に至るきめ細やかな心配りが感じられるスペースで、訪ねた私もお茶室に来たような身が引き締まる思いがしました。作品もとても素敵でしたが、庭と家屋が本当にきれいで手入れが行き届いている様子から、どのように生活しているのかも伺えるような場所でした。手はかかりますが、この柔らかな雰囲気は木の家ならではのものです。本当に素敵な場所でした。

玄関には内田鋼一さんの作品がやって来る人を迎えるかのように佇んでいました。機会があれば、また訪ねたい場所です。