GEM II

A while back I posted a chaire by Oni-Shino pioneer, Tsukigata Nahiko. The previous chaire was a classic Oni-Shino piece with all of the qualities one should think of when thinking about  the style. The illustrated chaire is a bit different, looking a bit like a seated Daruma character from a Zen painting and hardly recognizable as Oni-Shino. The Shino surface is tinged with ash coating the piece creating a beautiful light blue-green surface with the face of the piece painted where fierce scorching and ash built up. One of Tsukigata's true strengths as a potter was understanding his thick, complex surfaces and their effect on form. The choice of form and varying surface and the possibilities was paramount to his work and if you survey his pots, there is an appropriateness that was carefully created, it may also account for why so many pots were destroyed. The very nature of the violent process would create surfaces that did not marry well with their forms and by necessity, they would meet the hammer. This pot is the perfect blend of form and glaze and like the previous chaire, a wonderful miniature universe the fits into a beautiful silk bag.