Anita Feng
A poet who threw ocarinas on a wheel, met the Zelda rush head-on, and set aside a book about the instrument to fill the orders.
Anita Feng made stoneware ocarinas in Issaquah, Washington, and sold them from anitasocarinas.com. She threw them by hand on a wheel rather than pressing them in moulds, which is an unusual way to make an ocarina and the thing she was proudest of: “the process of turning the ocarina body on a wheel brings a greater structural integrity, therefore provides a sweeter, more resonant sound… That’s why very few make ocarinas this way.”
Anita Feng is living and has not given the museum permission for anything here. Nothing from her site is reproduced here beyond short quotations; the chronology below is built from documents — her own writing, and two newspaper pieces — and every row names where it came from.
Her mother gave her a German-made ocarina when she was a child in a musical household where she was learning the concert flute. “It was love at first sight.”
She was fired from her first full-time job, as a secretary at the New England Conservatory of Music, and by her own account has been self-employed ever since — “as a potter making musical instruments out of clay, and as a writer making words out of music.”
Two careers, not one
Anita Feng is a published poet, and the prizes are not incidental to the ocarinas: they are the other half of the same working life. The Pablo Neruda Prize in 1989, an Illinois Arts Council Fellowship in 1990, a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in 1992, all for poetry. Internal Strategies, poems, from the University of Akron Press in 1995, built on her husband’s childhood — he was sent to a re-education camp in Manchuria during the Cultural Revolution. Later the Backwaters Prize in 2005, and Sadie and Mendel in 2006.
The family moved from the East Coast to Issaquah, Washington in about 1996, and she worked in the basement of the house, on Squak Mountain at the edge of the Cascades.
Then Zelda
The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time was released in November 1998. Nintendo sold nearly 2.5 million copies in six weeks.
By February 1999 her business had more than doubled, to about sixty instruments a month — five to ten orders a day, three quarters of them from game players. She moved from the $16–20 four-hole necklace ocarinas that sold at craft fairs to $30–40 ten-hole instruments closer to the one in the game, and considered hiring help.
And she told her customers they were wrong. They wanted an ocarina exactly like the game’s, and she explained that they did not, because the finger holes on the Zelda instrument are arranged in a pattern that cannot physically be played. What they bought instead was the alto — the middle of the three sizes she offered in her traditional line, between the soprano and the tenor. “‘Zelda’ fans generally choose the alto traditional ocarina,” the Seattle Times reported. “It has the more magical, mystical sound,” she told the paper.
In April 1999 the traffic ran the other way. Nintendo of America ordered three ocarinas from her as gifts for executives at Nintendo in Japan, one of them Shigeru Miyamoto, who created the Zelda games. She put it on her front page, and it stayed there for the rest of the site’s life.
The book she set aside
In February 1999 she told the Seattle Times she was writing a book about ocarinas and her life as a craftsperson, and had suspended it to fill the Zelda orders.
She went back to it. By 2004 the book had a title — Ocarinas For a Song: An Ocarina Maker’s Guide to Craft, Life and the Unknown — a page of its own on the site, an invitation to readers to send their names for notice of publication, and a jacket endorsement from the novelist Susan Onthank Mates, who called it “part-reminiscence, part instruction, part philosophy and part pure poetry,” a life told “through the prism of her twenty-five years of making and selling ocarinas.”
Several thousand words of it were posted as excerpts, and the museum holds them. They are not reproduced here: the book was never published as far as anyone can establish, which makes them unpublished work by a living writer who has given no permission for them. The site still called it forthcoming in its last capture.
Whether it was ever finished, abandoned, or survives in a drawer is not known. She is a poet with an NEA fellowship, so it would not be an amateur manuscript — and a book by a working maker about her own instrument is the kind of document this museum exists to find.
How it ended
Sometime between September 2007 and April 2008 the front page gained a line at the top: “Retiring! I’ll be selling off my remaining stock until it’s all gone. Contact me by email regarding questions about what’s left. Thank you for your business!” — and, underneath, a pointer to the clay business she was starting instead.
Then the stock ran down in public. The price list was still complete on June 19, 2008. By September 28, 2008 the alto, the tenor and the bass were all marked Sold Out, leaving the soprano and the four-hole necklaces. By May 15 2009 the tenor was back and the other two were still gone — which is not what a straightforward sell-off looks like, and may mean she was still firing.
Four weeks later the domain lapsed, and the notice went with it.
Chronology
Dates the museum has been able to establish, and where each comes from.
| — | Born in Detroit, Michigan; then Illinois, Wisconsin, Massachusetts, Maine, Rhode Island, and finally Washington | her own author biography |
| — | Grows up in a musical household and learns the concert flute. Her mother gives her a German-made ocarina: “It was love at first sight” | Seattle Times, Feb 2, 1999 |
| c. 1974 | Begins making ocarinas. Her own site says “since 1974”; two newspapers three weeks apart agree — “25 years” and “the past quarter century”, both written in early 1999 | her own site; Seattle Times, Feb 2, 1999; New York Times, Feb 15, 1999 |
| — | Works out of Rhode Island in her early years, which is how Alan Albright knew of her | her author biography; Albright’s 1999 memoir, naming “Anita … who first worked out of Rhode Island” |
| 1989–1992 | Pablo Neruda Prize (1989); Illinois Arts Council Fellowship (1990); National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship (1992) — all for poetry | her own author biography |
| 1995 | Internal Strategies, poems, University of Akron Press | her author biography; Seattle Times |
| c. 1996 | The family moves to Issaquah, Washington; she works in the basement of the house | Seattle Times (Feb 1999: “three years ago”); her author biography |
| 1997–1998 | Andres Berger Award (1997); Washington State GAP Award (1998), both for creative nonfiction | her own author biography |
| early 1999 | The Zelda rush. Ocarina of Time had been released the previous November and sold nearly 2.5 million copies in six weeks; by February her business has more than doubled, to about sixty instruments a month, five to ten orders a day, three quarters of customers game players | New York Times, Feb 15, 1999; Seattle Times, Feb 2, 1999 |
| 1999 | She suspends the book she is writing, about ocarinas and her life as a craftsperson | Seattle Times |
| Apr 1999 | Nintendo of America orders three ocarinas as gifts for executives at Nintendo in Japan, among them Shigeru Miyamoto | her own site |
| 2001 | The Internet Archive begins capturing the domain, but holds only redirects until June 14, 2004, which is the earliest copy of the site itself | the Archive’s capture index |
| 2004 | The book has a title — Ocarinas For a Song: An Ocarina Maker’s Guide to Craft, Life and the Unknown — a page on the site, excerpts under a 2004 copyright, and an endorsement from the novelist Susan Onthank Mates | her own site |
| 2005–2006 | The Backwaters Prize (2005); Sadie and Mendel, Backwaters Press (2006) | her own author biography |
| Sept 2007 – Apr 2008 | She retires from ocarina-making. The front page gains a “Retiring!” notice selling off remaining stock and pointing readers to a new clay business. Absent from the capture of September 28, 2007; present on April 1, 2008 | the Archive’s captures of her front page |
| May–June 2009 | The domain lapses. The site is still up, still selling off stock, on May 16, 2009; by June 12, 2009 every address returns the registrar’s notice, “The domain anitasocarinas.com has expired” | the Archive’s captures |
| 2010–2011 | The lapsed domain is parked, filled with generated “related searches” and offered for sale | the Archive’s captures |
| 2013–2016 | It carries an unrelated Japanese-language site, and after 2016 nothing | the Archive’s captures |
| after | She makes clay buddhas and teaches at the Blue Heron Zen Community in Seattle | her own author site |
What the museum holds of anitasocarinas.com, and on what terms: Anita’s Ocarinas.