POSITIVELY OLD SCHOOL

Though I would be hard pressed to date this positively old school rustic wood fired mallet vase, if pushed I would guess it was likely made in the mid-1970s. Made by Takauchi Shugo, just prior to this date he had changed his life and put suit and tie on a rack and traded them in for more practical pottery making cloths; jeans, apron, denim shirt, the new uniform of a craftsman. Quite a number of Shugo's early work are strictly wood fired, haikaburi style or glazed and wood fired with a wonderful range of surfaces that speak less about Mashiko where he ended up than about an inner vision bursting at the seams. It would be hard to confuse this mallet vase for Mashiko-yaki  having a more Bizen, Echizen or even Tokoname appearance based on a more traditional and rigid form seen by many of the earlier potters but not quite like the forms of Arakawa and Tsukigata for instance. That being said, the surface compliments the form rather nicely making for a rich appearance on a rugged and honest pot. Though I greatly appreciate and even covet Takeuchi Shugo's broad interpretation of Oribe ware I find his early wood and salt fired pots quite enthralling and worth all the attention they can absorb.

There is an old quote by Alexander Pope that has always intrigued me, it goes; "An honest man's the noblest work of God", if this is reasonable or true, is an honest pot the noblest work of a potter?