The creation of the funerary urn for our friend Jack Hoeschler

by Richard Bresnahan, January, 2023

The urn was made at the St. John’s Pottery from the local clay at St. John’s University and Abbey. It was dug out of a closed roadside a few miles from St. John’s in Collegeville Township in 1979 and brought to St. John’s to be stored for 300 years of clay making.

In the making of the urn, elements of historical events are included in the piece that have spiritual significance. When the flat wooden bat is attached to the potter’s wheel with coils of clay, the bat is centered. Fine, washed Basswood ashes or Flax straw ashes are spread into a small mound at the center of the bat. As the wheel is slowly rotated the ashes in the center begin to spiral outward, creating an endless spiral. Once the anticipated diameter is reached the wheel stops. A soft wet sponge wipes an outer circle of water to allow the hand-pounded clay plate, which is the base of the urn, to stick to the outer edge of the bat on the wheel. Before laying the soft clay plate, five Kusunoki leaves are place in a pattern on top of the ashes.

The Kusunoki leaves come from a tree that we have in our home that was given to me by the St. Paul/Nagasaki Committee on the 50th anniversary of the atomic bombing of Nagasaki during World War Two. I was commissioned by the City of St. Paul to create a platter of Peace and “Joining of Hands,” to be gifted to the city of Nagasaki and the Japanese Embassy in Washington D.C. One platter resides in the Nagasaki Atomic Bomb Museum and another resides in Minnesota Historical Society Museum in St. Paul.

When Mayor Abe of Nagasaki came to St. Paul the following year, he brought ten seeds, “a spiritual seed number,” as a gift to the St. Paul mayor. The seeds are from the only tree that came back to life at the ground zero of the atomic bomb blast. The community of Nagasaki took this as a sign since it was a Kusunoki tree, translated into English it is a Camphor tree. The Kusunoki tree is a healing tree, and this tree became the center of the Nagasaki Peace Park. The ten seeds were given to St. Paul as a gift of healing and rebirth. All ten seeds were grown at the Como Park Conservatory and thrived. One of the trees was presented to me two years later as a thank you for creating the Nagasaki Global Harmony Platter.

When I create a spiritual piece like the final resting place for a human being or a tea ceremony water jar, I pick a few leaves from our tree and press them into the clay at the base and the underside of the lid. In making the sculpture Kura Prophetic Messenger, I created storage jars for sacred seeds of the Three Sisters (beans, corn, and squash). The base of the jar shows the green Kusunoki leaves indented into the base of the coiled and paddled jar. For Jack’s urn, the five leaves are in a similar pattern.

The urn is then coiled and paddled into a form which is slightly rounded. On the interior base is an impression of a hand-carved wood block of a Balinese healing leaf. This 18th-century carving was used to dip into textile dye and pressed into cloth to create healing patterns. The person who gave me this wood block told me that when a young child became ill, the healing leaf cloth would be wrapped around the stomach area to protect the belly button and the soul of the child. By impressing this intricately carved healing leaf into the interior base of the urn, inlayed with oak ash slip glaze, the resting place is created for Jack’s ashes.

The walls of the jar’s interior are concentric rings of a rounded piece of wood that is pounded into the interior surface to make patterns of rings of life, layer after layer as the urn grows upward to the correct height. The urn is large enough for the remains of two human beings. This is meant for husband and wife who feel they would like to be together for eternity. If it is to be singular as a resting place, there is room for messages from family members and poetry placed above and with the ashes.

The whole interior is then brushed with oak ash slip glaze. The outer part of the urn revels the wooden paddle markings made by paddling the interior and exterior at the same time in a rhythm movement. The final coils that are added are thrown on the potter’s wheel, and the clay is rounded inward and folded down to make a lip to receive the lid to the urn in a recessed manner.

Pattern carving and lines are made at the upper shoulder of the urn. Iron slip from the clay deposit is brushed thickly over the exterior surface. The lid is made in the same way the base of the urn, with spiral ashes and five Kusunoki leaves. A total of ten leaves in numerical symbology. The center top of the lid by which you would grasp to lift the lid from the urn is a stepped pagoda. A simple form used to mark a sacred site.

The urn was fired in the first chamber of the Johanna wood-burning kiln. The urn was fired upside down with the lid on during the firing. It was balanced in suspension in mid-air by three posted bricks. During the firing, the natural ashes melting onto the surface of the urn would flow upward on the jar. After the firing, and after the kiln cooled for two weeks, the urn was unloaded and turned right side up, and the flowing glaze looks like it is defying gravity and flow upward. This was to symbolize a lifting and flowing spirit in an upward movement. Jack was a quiet and strong person who had deep altruistic goals to the benefit of those less fortunate. He also had a deep level of understanding of creative beauty in all manners peaceful and whole. Now he rests in a reliquary in his library in a simple and quiet urn.

With much love to Jack.

Sincerely,

Richard