Wednesday, October 7, 2015

AO+

There is certainly no denying the fact that I am enthralled with the work of Kawai Kanjiro and one of my goals over the past couple of years is to get close to a real gosu style glaze that is compatible with the way I work and the forms that I work with. I have always been drawn to the gosu of Kawai, all the way back to my first encounter in the early eighties; the depth, the possibilities and the mysterious qualities that hang like diaphanous silk on a form is unlike any other surface I can think of. Truthfully though, I am not looking to just copy Kawai's gosu, rather take the aspects that I love and create my own glaze, a glaze that is simpatico with my way of working and the pots I make. Fast forward to the past couple of months and I have gotten as close to the gosu that I really want as I could imagine. My Ao+ is fairly rich and has a wide array of nuances that are hard to photograph, breaking on ridges and high points, it is always just one tweak away from exactly what I see in my mind's eye. Perhaps in the next incarnation, it will be absolutely perfect, though fully aware of my nature, maybe it will be the version after that.
"Perfection is acquired by slow degrees; it requires the hand of time." Francios-Marie Arouet (1694-1778)