Monday, January 23, 2012

IY-SAF45a NERIAGE

I decided to extend my neriage work into the stoneware, so a while back, I made up a batch of  colored stoneware and then set about throwing a few teabowls. I glazed these teabowls up in my saffron glaze (using yellow iron oxide) and they got fired along with a group of pots a week or so ago. Illustrated is one of the teabowls, front and back. The actual colored clay has come out a neat brown/black color with fine whitish speaks, from the fire clay I would imagine. The actual glaze which is normally an opaque glaze, has run to a translucent, rich amber with areas of purple-brown where the colored clay has bled and run down the surface of the pot. There are areas of mossy like running effects around the exterior and the interior is covered in an opaque iron yellow.

The neriage style I am using is more about bold patterning which I liken to suminagashi. I am not interested in lots of layers in the clay and am much more happy with two to five layers running throughout which also means I need to be careful in the wedging and the intial pull-up when I start to throw the clay. Though it was not my intention, it somehow reminds me of the works of the Kawai Kanjiro student, Ueda Tsuneji (1914-1988) and of some of the Fujina lead glazes. In the back of my mind, I just keep hearing, "what else can you do with this style?".

"The best way to keep good acts in memory is to refresh them with new."  Cato the Younger (Marcus Porcius Cato; 95 BC - 46 BC)