Warren Mackenzie: How did Mackenzie’s mentors influence his work? For more than fifty years, Warren Mackenzie’s, has pursued the philosophy of the mingei (Japanese/Korean folkcraft) tradition in both his work and his daily life. The first major influence on the Mackenzie’s was the work of the British potter Bernard Leach. Warren and his wife Alix were impressed with Leach’s philosophy, which embraced Eastern and Western practices and celebrated the simple mingei functional pot. After moving to Saint Paul, and following much correspondence, they convinced Leach to take them on as apprentices at his renowned pottery in St. Ives, Cornwall, England. Unexpectedly, Warren and Alix ended up living in Leach’s home where they were surrounded by an array of pots from China, Japan, and elsewhere. Born in Hong Kong and raised in Japan, Leach had, in his youth, befriended the young Japanese potter Shoji Hamada, who helped him set up his St. Ives pottery. Appreciating this pottery thirty years later, the Mackenzie’s met Hamada, by then a master mingei potter, and the aesthetician Soetsu Yanagi, who had coined the term mingei which is folk art to refer to common, often anonymously made, craft objects. Daily contact with Hamada and Yanagi drew the Mackenzie’s even more deeply into the mingei philosophy showing them that it was a way of life, not just a way of making pots and set their future course. “I gravitated to Hamada’s philosophy and how he threw pots. It was a philosophy of “don’t look at my work, but look at the influences of my work,” Warren stated. “These influences are stronger [than my pots], as they represent a culture. Koreans didn’t have a word for “good’ or “bad,” just “mu, it is.” Hamada’s work had tremendous breadth. It was an attitude, mu, carried out as well as possible. Mackenzie likes the historic pots of China and Japan and Korea, where the culture was more elemental, when these pots were beginning to be made. Much of contemporary Japanese pottery has become all too clever but fantastic in terms of technical skill. The potters have gained incredible skills, but they have lost an emotional reason to express.