JOURNEE ENSOLEILEE

I first saw this rich black chawan on a website in Japan and really liked the glaze quality and the wonky form and I suspect it is very enjoyable to hold. This photo was taken on a rather sunny day in France and I thought this informal portrait gave a different, less sterile appreciation of the form and surface. Showing the balancing act between the shiny and the slightly coarse qualities of the piece together with the casual throwing brings the chawan to life, animated in the sunlight and just begging to be picked up and put to whatever use you have in mind. At the end though I wonder just how much better off this Tsujimura Kai chawan is bathed in sun than sitting high off on some distant shelf just collecting dust.

"How clear, how lovely bright,

How beautiful to sight

Those beams of morning play

How heaven laugh out with glee

Where, like a bird set free

Up from the eastern sea

Soars the delightful day.

To-day I shall be strong

No more shall yield to wrong

Shall squander life no more;

Days lost, I know not how,

I shall retrieve them now:Nor I shall keep the vow

I never kept before.

Ensanguining the skies

How heavily it dies

Into the west away

Past touch and sight and sound

Not further to be found

How hopeless under ground

Falls the remorseful day." A.E. Houseman