I was recently discussing a
couple of pots that a fellow collector was offered over the internet. The first
was a vase represented by 2 of the worst pictures I have seen, slightly out of
focus and each one clipped a small amount of the vase from the frame. The other
was a series of 16 perfect pictures that showed ever angle and nuance of a wood
fired tsubo. In the end he decided to choose the vase with the two lousy
pictures and skip the tsubo. His reasoning and justification was simple, in all
of the really good tsubo pictures he managed to see what he believed was a firing
crack that came out of the mouth and down the side about 2" or so . As for
the vase which he bought, the pot showed real potential and knowing the potter
and the fact that it was boxed made him the most confident that the pot would
be a winner when it arrived. In our last email exchange I asked him what
happens if the pot was damaged after the potter boxed and sold it, for some
inexplicable reason, that had never occurred to him. I am certainly not knocking
his decision making process as all collectors have some peculiar guidelines for
what and how we collect but being a bit of a cynic I wish that I had a bit of
that optimism and could get away with the ignorance is bliss mantra. I guess at
the end of the day everyone takes a leap of faith when buying anything off the
internet just waiting to see what will arrive and what condition it will arrive
in and the biggest issue; do you respond to the piece in hand?
.JPG)