T'ZU CHOU

Our first contact with the work of Ochiai Miyoko (b.1946), who lives and works outside of Kyoto in Shiga-ken was back in 1983 through the JAPANESE CERAMIC TODAY exhibition. In the exhibition was a small T'zu Chou style tsubo with a lively black fish, detailed with sgraffito on a nearly pure white background, the piece and effect was quite elegant with an aire of nobility thrown in for good measure. Over the years we saw her work here and there including several pieces on our trips to Japan in the 1990s but it wasn't until we first hopped on the internet super-highway that we found our first Ochiai that was for sale; in fact one of our very first purchases, a T'zu Chou floral vase over the pc was with Robert Yellin back in the late 90s.

Flash forward to the present day and we recently stumbled on to a rather attractive Ochiai bud vase with the very same decoration as was on the Kikuchi tsubo in the 1983 exhibition. Standing about six inches tall this ko-tsubo has a rather graphic sense to the decoration and the pot is both delicate and well thrown with a small, raised foot. I took a number of photos of the piece and built this short video slideshow to try to capture the volume and presence of the pot, hopefully the video will paint a fuller picture.