At
first thought you may wonder what do Jackson Pollack and The Heino(s) have in
common and from my perspective it is about
application. Pollack is Pollack and I think anyone that knows his work
also understands his method and application, for Gertrude and Otto Heino I
remember seeing these stoneware pots, from small to large with vivid slashes
and drips of oxides and glazes decorating the pots. My first thought way back
in the early days of decorating was how do you combine these two ideals to
animate and liven up a surface and while playing around way back at CSU I came
up with this idea of Pollack's windows where there where slightly asymmetrical
squares across a dark black background on terra cotta with splashes and trails
of color and slips across the surface, in the end it just reminded me of
fireworks going off and decorating the pieces.
Flash forward to a
recent request from a long time customer who wanted something for a July 4th
tea ceremony he was having. Since he has ordered terra cotta pieces as well as
stoneware I suggest this hanabi (sky flower) style decoration for his
commission of teabowl, mizusashi, kensui, futaoki, kensui and shakutate. I set
about making a pair of teabowls first to see if it worked for him and got his
approval to make the entire set which has been completed and shipped out with
actual time to spare. What is illustrated is the ghost piece, the shadow set as
I only made one lid rest, waste water bowl and ladle stand which may not have
been the smartest thing but it ended up working out. As you can see what ties
these pieces together id the specific white decoration that is on all the
pieces as well as the limited use of splashed colors being confined to red
iron, grey and a teal blue. These are fun to decorate but a bit messy and with
the right consistency and brush there is a small degree of control that you can
exert, all I can say now is Happy Forth!
You can see more of this trio
over on my Trocadero webpage;
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