Friday, December 19, 2014

CONUNDRUM

The chawan illustrated is from an old Tsukigata Nahiko catalogue, it is Oni-Shino though somewhat dark and ominous and punctuated by the bold kintsugi repair now holding the bowl together in bold and perfect imperfection. I have often looked at this illustration and the conundrum it poses; what it was about this particular chawan that made Tsukigata go through the herculean effort to salvage and repair the pot? I have seen a number of pictures where he is purposely breaking pots with a hammer so his typical sense of "quality control" seems to have eluded this bowl, the question still remains, what is it about this chawan that he felt compelled to save and re-envision the pot. I doubt I will ever get a thoroughly satisfying answer but every now and again I go back and study the photo with an eye to understand how this pot stood apart from others that found their way in to a pile of shards.