A hundred years ago, there was a potter called Tokuro Kato.

He is the man I respect the most as the greatest potter in Japan.

By the way, the greatest potter in the world is Josiah Wedgwood, I figure.

Since I am a ceramic geek, I have collected all the books written by Tokuro and read all his literatures.

And there was a line which never goes away from my mind.

He tossed a shovel and a pickax into a mini truck box. And then he crazily looked for clay and materials everywhere in the Japanese mountains.

The town I live in is called "Tsumagi-cho" in Toki city, Gifu prefecture.

According to what Tokuro said in his literatures, there was best clay for ceramics in some mountain in Tsumagi.

I also tossed a shovel and a pickax into a mini truck box. And then I crazily searched for the place.

I went into the mountain at noon on 20th of September 2017 and I finally found the place as mentioned in his literature!

There were plenty of feldspars and silica stones for clay and glaze there.

To make matters interesting, I went further into the depths of the mountain and there was a secret place which produced crystals.

I got some crystals from there and tried firing them. And I found them really great.

And then I got really motivated like "I truly want to create ceramics using this clay and crystal from the mountain!!"

For us, mountains are the treasure-trove.

I've created ceramics using the things I struck from there.

I'd be really glad if you could enjoy my experimental works and my experimental price revolution which I'm going to mention below.

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"Price revolution"

I'm thinking of making an experiment in order to restructure concepts of sales price for ceramics.

It's hard to put prices on them.

The prices usually get set after I feel like "Ok, this one is worth this amount."

When customers accept the prices, they pay cash to buy them.

And then they will go distributed in the world and the prices will stay the same.

That's how the prices get set.

But what about setting prices together with customers? That came into my mind.

I'm not really sure if I'm allowed to let everybody know this but

When exhibits are on sale at galleries, 100% of the sales is divided into 60% to artists and 40% to galleries.

I just thought it would be a good idea if I started selling at 60% of the actual price with the calculation of 60% to artists and 40% to customers

since I don't have to think about our labor cost when I sell them at my own gallery.

If a piece of work sells well and it becomes popular, its price will rise along with its popularity.

And eventually its price will reach 100. If it gets more popular, I think it'll be ok for its price to reach 1000 or 10000.

Our customers and I will decide the market prices going around the world.

That's interesting, isn't it?

Of course, I will introduce my ceramics at 100% of the actual price when I sell them at the other galleries.

Only this web exhibition and 21st century can make it possible to have this kind of experiment.

If I feel like "It's wrong!", I will stop doing it immediately.

I really beg you will bear with this experiment of the relationship between price and money.

If it gets in a groove, I will continue to create my experimental works and I'm sure I'll be able to accelerate the introductions of them to the world.

Please believe in me and I hope to receive the support from you, guys!

Potter Ryota Aoki