A Single Shard

As Tree-ear goes to work early one morning, he sees a potter named Kang moving toward the kiln site with some covered objects in his cart. All the potters jealously guard their work from each other to protect their techniques from being copied. Spying on Kang’s workshop, the boy sees Kang with two dishes containing red and white clay water, or slip. Tree-ear is puzzled because potters don’t usually use slip in these colors:

What the potters sought was the gray-brown clay that fused so well with the celadon glaze. Both the body of a vessel and its glaze changed color when fired; a vessel that went into the kiln a dull mousy color emerged a remarkable translucent green (56).

The boy continues to mull over this mystery as summer changes to fall. His endless cycle of work for Min continues, but Tree-ear has begun to dream of shaping pottery himself. “It would be a prunus vase […] Tall and beautifully proportioned […] a prunus vase was designed for one purpose—to display a single branch of flowering plum” (57).

As the weather grows colder, Crane-man presents Tree-ear with a pair of new sandals. Unfortunately, they are too small because Tree-ear is growing quickly.