SCARRED CLAY

I have an internet friend that knowing my interest in wood fired pottery send me jpegs now and again that he thinks may be of interest. The other day he sent a group and among them was a handful of images of a rather animated Shigaraki haikaburi chawan by Kowari Tetsuya. At first glance the form looks pretty straight forward defined by its brief and concise nature but as you study it you see the naturalistic twist to the form that set the piece in motion and is echoed in the lip and lower lines of the pot, not quite as simple as first thought. The chawan is covered over in a mostly drier natural ash surface with the face being punctuated not only by areas of wad scars and a rich hi-iro but also by several ash drips and a series of punctuated areas where the feldspar has melted out of the surface. I find the bowl eminently practical with its straight sides and solid kodai but there is a sense of wit and playfulness that makes the chawan just that much more interesting. Admittedly, Kowari Tetsuya is one of those potters that I enjoy how he handles the clay, molds it to fit his mind's eye and chooses a firing style that best compliments the pot be they Kohiki, Shino, Oribe or Shigaraki, each is chosen to bring out the most of the form and purpose of the pot.

"Brevity is the soul of wit." William Shakespeare

SAFFRON FACETS

This teabowl was part of a recently fired group of similar pots where I was trying to figure out how each glaze and glaze combination worked on this idea. This teabowl is glazed in my saffron, iron yellow glaze, dipped once and where the glaze ran and pooled around the horizontal projections it built up creating a darker area as well as running over the edges with a neat effect reminding me of some glaze attributes of Agano-Takatori wares. The translucent nature of the surface allows the way the clay was dealt with while wet to show through which is a nice feature of this glaze making the piece static, almost like it came directly off the wheelhead. I suspect the next steps will be to see what slips look like over this faceting and under the effects of the saffron surface hopefully creating another, distinct look.

STYLE & SUBSTANCE

The box is inscribed IGA STYLE CHAWAN but I think it is quite easy to look at this piece and see that it has Iga written across the entire surface. Made in Gifu Prefecture by Mizuno Takuzo, despite being a traditional Mino potter, he created a wide array of distinct wood fired pots that center around Mino-Iga and Iga style pottery. This Iga style chawan is a typical example of Mizuno's unglazed, haikaburi style wood fired pieces that despite being made miles away from Iga have many of the tell tale signs of that distinct pottery excepting the clay body which is much more Mino in origin. The face of this chawan has that medieval presence that I am very fond of that at first glance defies its age with running ash giving way to the rough surface underneath with areas of spatula work and other slight manipulation giving an overall depth and sense of movement to the piece. The green ash highlights the undulating lip and stoic form which balances very well with the exposed clay color of the kodai. I can't help but think that this purposeful pot is an honest combination of both style and substance all in the guise of a rather forthright "Iga style" chawan.

THE DARK SIDE

I recently spent a little time with this rather nice chaire by arguably, the father of modern Iga, Tanimoto Kosei. The chaire is of a rather sturdy and classic medieval form with a great surface which, like the Moon has a light side and a dark side. The area facing away from the fire has a wonderful, green ash surface with areas of deep pooled effects that add a sense of animation to the pot while the area that faced the fire has a dark, almost ominous surface of dark greys and a shiny black that masks much of the surface in shadows and mystery. I have seen quite a few chaire by Tanimoto Kosei over the years and for me, it is a safe bet this is among the finest I have seen showcasing a great form and even greater surface to create an excellent Iga example. I took quite a few photos of this chaire and put together a short video slideshow to give a sense of what this Tanimoto Kosei Iga chaire offered in person, I hope this gives you the sense of the pot.

READY & WAITING

Since our house is built in to the ground, generally speaking my studio stays at a somewhat constant temperature of around 60 to 65 degrees but today is a bit different. With well over a foot of snow, the storm has given way to a cold front and it was -11 this morning which resulted in a studio that was just a bit below 50 degrees. From my perspective this is an environment that is just not really conducive to glazing so calling an audible, I called a cold day. I have a good handful of pots ready to go when it warms up a bit and illustrated are two previously decorated and glazed/ fired teabowls that are somewhat similar to a small group of teabowls that will be glazed up in Oribe, ash, saffron iron and an amber as weather permits. There is an upside to the cold snap in the studio, it gives me a bit more time to consider what glazes to use on what pots and eliminates the last group of pots all being glazed exactly the same.

"Time flies over us but leaves its shadow behind." Nathaniel Hawthorne

"The time is always right to do what is right." Martin Luther King Jr.

YASCP

Before anyone says anything, yes, another stupid cat photo. Back just before Thanksgiving my wife and I made our way to a fellow collectors home and then brought back a number of pots that the owner wished to part with and of course, Khan immediately was attracted to the big Oribe one first chance he got. In using the floor as a staging point for photographing what I did not realize was that the owner had a small slip of paper inside the large Kato Toyohisa Oribe jar as a means of identification and though I missed it entirely, Khan somehow did not. As I was photographing another piece, I realized that Khan was doing absolutely everything possible to get himself entirely in to the jar as his arm was just not long enough to reach the slip of paper. I retrieved the "cat toy" and showed it to Khan at which point he totally lost interest and went off to sleep somewhere. It is amazing how being brought up around pottery, he is extremely gentle with the pieces and even more surprising that he is just as aware of a piece of paper in the bottom of a jar at twenty paces.

"Time spent with a cat is never wasted."  Sigmund Freud

AKAZU-YAKI

I really don't know a lot about Akazu-yaki other then it springs from Aiichi Prefecture and is considered under the general umbrella of Seto pottery finding its roots going all the way back to the Heian period and Sueki wares. What is quite obvious is that this mizusashi has a classic Mino-Iga appearance of a feudal vessel with a rather rich surface composed of ash and iron glazes and was made by Akazu-yaki potter Kato Tsuneyoshi (Tsutsumi?). Like the ware itself, I don't know much about Kato Tsuneyoshi but based on the vessel, it is exceedingly well crafted with a well articulated surface, classic lugs and handle applied to finish off the pot and did I mention the thick green pool on the lid surrounding the handle? Besides the stoic, medieval form, the depth and luminescence of the ash really catches my attention, soaking the form in a beautiful surface of varying green bidoro which is punctuated  by areas of a translucent and opaque iron evoking the image of a waterfall pouring down the pot, a narrative painted around the pot in glaze and experience. Some of the most beautiful effects take place around the mizusashi as the base projects creating a strong and stable platform for the piece where ash and iron are highlighted as they collect creating a vivid boundary of deep green and iron from the cascading glazes. Though this is the first and only pot that I have encountered by this potter, it is quite clear that he is quite well practiced based on the way the mizusashi is potted, through the dignity and purpose of form and the skillful application of glaze and I look forward to my next (?) encounter with Akazu-yaki by Kato Tsunayoshi .

FOUR FOR ONE

The illustrated teabowl came out of a firing about a month (?) back but honestly at this point, I see everything as a blur and keeping track or who, what, where and when is more a suggestion than an absolute. In faceting this bowl I accounted for two very distinct raised bands around the body as both a tactile and visual element as well as to allow the glaze to build a nice deep ring at the top of all of the protruding points. Once set up after throwing, I poured a thin coat of white slip at two spots on the piece which accounts for the distinct areas that are brighter than the rest of the bowl and the surface worked well with a nice mottled affect moving from rich, deep green to areas of iron creating a rather natural patchwork effect. The foot is a simple tooled one with a notch cut out for both functional and to break up the circular regularity. I am enjoying making this style teabowl, none come out exactly the same and there is a spontaneity and directness to the process and form which presents a new angle on my thrown pieces.

NOW IS THEN; SHINO AND THE OLD MAN

Illustrated is a screen capture for a wonderful old Japanese documentary that I found about Arakawa Toyozo. The fact that this is subtitled is certainly a bonus but seeing footage of perhaps one of the most famous potters of the 20th Century gives one a great insight into a way with Shino. This documentary was made circa 1968 by documentary film maker/ director; Matsukawa Yasuo (1931-2006) and is known by its Japanese title, IMA WA MUKANSHI SHINO TO OKINA. I don't want to say that such videos are rare but they are not seen frequently enough outside of Japan and any insight in to the nature of a master's work is certainly not to be overlooked.

"Life is a succession of lessons which must be lived to be understood. All is a riddle, and the key to a riddle is another riddle."  Ralph Waldo Emerson

NASUBI

Illustrated is a lovely ink painting by veteran Mino potter, Wakao Toshisada. Though best known for his classic Momoyama inspired or Rimpa influenced pieces; Wakao has created quite a few kakejiku and shikishi covering a broad field of subject matter, of which this nasubi eggplant scroll is one. What brought this piece to mind was that tonight is vegetarian dinner night and my wife mentioned eggplant and pasta, should I mention I am not a huge fan of eggplant? A compromise was struck, and my pasta will be with charcoaled onions and peppers, though she is sticking with the eggplant for herself. All this discussion of the evil purple solanum made me remember that I had a few illustrations of an eggplant scroll by Toshisada so I sought it out and here it is in all its simplicity. At its core, this painting gives me a quick flashback to the famous Mu Ch'i scroll of six persimmons, though I am not exactly sure why. Admittedly if you told me about a painting of two eggplants, I am not sure it would distract me from counting sand but after seeing the way the ink was applied, the nasubi casually displayed and portrayed and the use of the surrounding negative space, I am sold on eggplant, in ink if not in actuality.

THIS IS NOT A MUG

I'll start out by saying that this is not a mug, it is a bowl with a "stabilizing" handle. I first started making this type of bowl way back in the early 90s when a customer showed me an old, redware bowl with a handle on it dating to the late 19th or early 20th century. To be fair, it was a bit more like an oversized old fashioned dinner coffee cup but it was intended as a bowl for soup or what have you. I modified the general idea and added a straight sided collar to keep things from sloshing out or spilling from the bowl while in use and added a handle that was more about stabilizing the form rather than as a full on handle though it functions perfectly well in that capacity. The customer was pleased with the idea, I made six or eight for them and have been making them ever since in some incarnation or another since that point. This one is of thrown stoneware, impressed medallions around the belly and glazed in a temmoku that has areas of a blue tint and breaks to a fine rust where thin. My wife and I actually still have a terra cotta set that I made back in Cleveland and we use them for everything from soup, chili, ice cream, stew and just about anything else you can eat out of a bowl.

SUNNY IDEAL

We had our first day of real sunshine here today, the first in a long time so I took the opportunity to move some pots around and let the sun shine down on this small pot. Besides being a gift from Warren MacKenzie way back in the 90s, I have always been quite fond of this amber celadon and wood ash glazed "utensil holder" for the purposeful form, the wonderful texture, the thick, durable mouth and the applied feet which change the shadow line of the pot. Thrown out of porcelain, this pot has a great weight to it, made to stand up to the rigors of daily use for which it was intended though it is used infrequently here instead holding a place of reverence as well as serving as an ideal about what it means to truly be a functional pot.

PASSING OF A GIANT

                                Warren MacKenzie 
      February 16, 1924 – December 31, 2018

JUST A JAR

Illustrated is a rather classic Shigaraki tsubo with a traditional net pattern paddled across the surface. This large tsubo was made by veteran Shigaraki staple, Takahashi Shunsai  and is fired in a rather typical fashion for the potter with areas of wet and dry ash coverage together with areas of fine hi-iro fire color. Born in 1927, Shunsai studied under his father Rakusai III who is credited with bringing attention back to traditional Shigaraki pottery of the region as well as revitalizing the tradition as a whole. Takahashi Shunsai's works follows in his father's footsteps where he has added his own voice to the family business which is balanced against the work of his brother Rakusai IV. Did I mention it was big, at over 13" tall and 17" wide it makes for a rather impressive, timeless display piece that captures what 20th century Shigaraki is all about while having just a hint of the modern in its bearing and form. There is a rather nice catalogue which showcases Shunsai's jars; THE SHIGARAKI WARE; NAOKATA'S TEA WARE & SHUNSAI'S JARS, illustrating a number of wonderful tsubo and surfaces that any 20th or 21st Century Shigaraki potter would be proud to create.