ECHO

I'll start out by saying that I intentionally altered the "brightness" of this photo so that you can see the details just a bit better and in doing so may have altered the actual color of this piece. I say may have because obviously this is not my photo nor have I seen this piece in hand but I think we are close enough to the actual visual values of the pot and seeing the piece a bit better is worth the risk in my opinion. This particular Touko-ao tsubo is a bit different than many that you see, it has a classic medieval Persian urn form with accented lobes to alter the pot just a bit and then has the wonderful dark indigo blue to black decoration that immediately brings Kato Kenji to mind. The opaque style glaze just gives the piece a sense of age, a classic surface that doesn't obscure the decoration or form but simply enhances it all the while dancing on the razor's edge between the old and the new. When the pot was glazed, Kato Kenji decided to allow the rich earthenware to speak up and act as a eloquent contributor to the overall presentation which is juxtaposed so well against the archaic Persian blue appearance. Though not a large pot in scale and despite its quiet and serene nature, this signature style tsubo has both the elegance and nobility that echoes across time from the ageless archetype to present day.