When I was traveling in S.E. Asia I was always looking for things that would attract and excite me visually. I always carry a notebook, I have a pad of paper and a pen or pencil beside my bed. If I am with my wife shopping, at a movie, in a restaurant and I get this glazed look in my eyes, with my right hand twitching, she starts digging for a pen, because I am having an idea. Not that my ideas are earth shattering, I am not a brilliant scientist, I am unlikely to discover a cure for cancer. But, everyone’s ideas are important to themselves. I may have thought of a new product that I can make and sell to help support my family, or perhaps a ‘one-off’ piece. These would be important ideas to me.

Because if you don’t write it down it is gone. You will not remember it in the morning. A few days ago I listened to a radio program about the Jazz musician Duke Ellington. He is once reported to have said, "The best music I ever composed came to me one night and I didn’t write it down, I thought I would remember it in the morning. I’ve been looking for it ever since."

I believe that you, the viewer of this show, should take some idea or bit of insight with you when you leave. This is it. If you have an idea that is important to you WRITE IT DOWN! Ok, I’ll get off my soapbox now, I did mention that I was a minister and sometimes I get a little preachy.

Where was I? Oh ya, so there is amazing pottery in Asia, I saw some pretty cool work from the Yongle period of the Ming Dynasty (1403-1424) in China, in the Tsui collection in Hong Kong. I made sketches of some of the forms, one of which I came back to years later. The ceramic monks flask was, obviously enough, the flask that monks used to carry water during their pilgrimages and travels. It had a round flat body with a long neck and was called a lotus lip opening at the top. There were usually handles on either side for a rope to sling the bottle over a shoulder. I thought they were a lovely form, I still do.

The Monks flasks at the time would only have been in ceramic, glass is usually a very precious material in historical times and usually reserved for the royalty and nobility. Only very recently has glass been mass-produced so that it is affordable for every one.