Michael Marcus and Yaki-Shime pottery

12:00AM / Wednesday, May 16, 2001Print Story | Email Story

There is life in pottery beyond the gas kiln and the white china coffee mug. Pottery began in open fires. The Berkshires shelter potent forms of this art. Interlaken Art School in Stockbridge teaches Raku firing. Michael Marcus of Monterey fires his pottery in several thousand cubic feet of flame. Marcus has developed two businesses, or two art forms, side by side: Joyous Spring Pottery, and Bizen Japanese Restaurant and Sushi bar. Marcus practices the 1,000-year-old art of yaki-shime, unglazed stoneware pottery colored by fire. Yaki-shima pottery is fired in the Bizen Nobori Gama, a multichambered climbing kiln, 43 feet long, eight feet wide, beneath its own shed. It was named, like Marcusâ€™ restaurant, for the Bizen province of Japan, where it was born. Marcusâ€™ Bizen Nabori Gama fires 1,500 pieces, once a year. In Japan, he said, yaki-shima pottery appears on tables and in tea ceremonies, and holds ikebana, flower arrangements. Marcus serves his customers on his own bowls and platters. He displays urns three feet tall, and sets flowers in his own hanging vases. The watertight nonporous stoneware is mottled rust, russet, black and silver. wood ash liquefies into a natural glaze. Marcus wraps some pots in rice straw that burns away, leaving dark fire mark patterns. He buries other pieces in embers for a roughened surface, or shovels charcoal over them. He uses 15 different firing techniques, he said. â€œThe firing process is so monumental ... â€ it unleashes such vast forces of nature. There is only so much room for experimenting with a raging inferno. The Bizen Nobori Gama is made of 10,000 firebrick and reaches temperatures over 2,300 degrees Fahrenheit. It is fired continuously for 10 days, heated by hardwood. Marcus said he goes through 10 to 12 cords of wood at a firing. Afterward, the kiln takes a week to cool and a week to unload. Marcus has been a full-time potter since 1971. He studied wood-fired pottery four years in Japan. â€œThey didnâ€™t teach you much,â€ he said; he watched and worked. â€œIt was a total immersion in the Japanese culture.â€ He spent time with kiln builders and potters both. When he had served this apprenticeship, he came to the Berkshires, and began to build his own kiln in 1981. He first fired it in 1984. He opened Bizen in 1986. The restaurant came about through the Japanese connection between pottery and food, Marcus said; the Japanese traditionally believed that the taste of food was in the pottery. Presentation was a part of the experience of eating. â€œTo put beautiful food in pottery changes the whole nature of the cuisine ... it would be like eating from a Van Gogh painting,â€ he said. Sushi is arranged so beautifully; the experience is exponentially more powerful when it is arranged on a beautiful serving dish. Bizen is 90 percent organic. Marcus uses high quality fish and sake, and makes unusual sushi rolls, for example lobster, crab, and scallops. The restaurant is developed around the tea ceremony, Marcus said. It â€” the room, the wood beams, the furniture â€” is made from natural materials. Along one wall there are Tatami rooms with real mats. As with his pottery, he decoration is minimal. In Japanese tradition, he said, fine dining is about enjoying food and company. Raku, Markus added, was developed in Japan in the 16th century, to produce black tea bowls for the tea ceremony. Raku pieces are porous and glazed. Like Interlaken in Stockbridge, a pottery in upstate New York holds a Raku firing every August. The outdoor kilns look like upside down, insulated wire waste baskets. They sit on brick bases. Flames shoot from holes in the top, invisible during the day, but enough to burn the eyelashes off of anyone who leans to close to peer in. The potter lifts the kiln top off the bricks, and lifts out red hot pots with a pair of tongs. Their glaze is liquid. They look like molten glass. The potter plunges pots and bowls into metal bins of sawdust or newspaper shavings and puts lids over them. The shavings burn quickly and oxidize the glaze. Raku pieces have a brittle, iridescent sheen. Some glazes crackle into long, fine lines. Some turn copper, electric blue, green, pink, colors out of insect wings and oil slicks. Unglazed clay will come out black. The potter takes a partly cooled bowl out of the sawdust, maybe a half an hour after it went in, and sluices it in water. If the inner and outer surfaces are wetted at the same time, and the heat kept even, the bowl will not crack. The process is too stressful for large pieces.

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McCann Recognizes Superintendent Award Recipient

By Tammy DanielsiBerkshires Staff
05:32PM / Tuesday, December 23, 2025

Landon LeClair and Superintendent James Brosnan with Landon's parents Eric and Susan LeClair, who is a teacher at McCann.

NORTH ADAMS, Mass. — The Superintendent's Award has been presented to Landon LeClair, a senior in McCann Technical School's advanced manufacturing course.

The presentation was made last Thursday by Superintendent Jame Brosnan after Principal Justin Kratz read from teachers' letters extolling LeClair's school work, leadership and dedication.

"He's become somewhat legendary at the Fall State Leadership Conference for trying to be a leader at his dinner table, getting an entire plate of cookies for him and all his friends," read Kratz to chuckles from the School Committee. "Landon was always a dedicated student and a quiet leader who cared about mastering the content."

LeClair was also recognized for his participation on the school's golf team and for mentoring younger teammates.

"Landon jumped in tutoring the student so thoroughly that the freshman was able to demonstrate proficiency on an assessment despite the missed class time for golf matches," read Kratz.

The principal noted that the school also received feedback from LeClair's co-op employer, who rated him with all fours.

"This week, we sent Landon to our other machine shop to help load and run parts in the CNC mill," his employer wrote to the school. LeClair was so competent the supervisor advised the central shop might not get him back.

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