ONE, THAN TWO

I can't help but be reminded by a somewhat animated form straight out of ALICE IN WONDERLAND as I look at this highly Yuteki-Temmoku Koro by Fukumori Morihiko. As is clear to see in the photo all of the ridges and lines make excellent use of how this glaze works on pottery with all of the dark areas counterbalanced by the coppery, shadowy visual texture on all of the highpoints and edges that help make up this form. Though it may be a bit hard to see in this photo, each oilspot cell is filled with the same coppery nucleus that roves around the edges of the piece tying the form together and at the same time keeping the various elements of the form distinctly defined and contained.

I had my first encounter with Fukumori's work back in the early 90s where a dealer in Kyoto had a number of his wonderful guinomi and tokkuri as well as a few koro and chawan, a single mizusashi and two or three (?) vases. Perhaps in total we handled about 25 pieces and the hook was sunk as it were. On that day we bought two guinomi both of which disappeared out of our luggage on the way home but by sheer happenstance a Japanese dealer offered us a gourd form vase just after we returned home so we had our first piece and have not looked back. This koro was our anniversary gift to each other two years ago and little did we know that only one week later we would find another koro on the ubiquitous auction website for a price that was and is quite easy to live with. Hopefully I can get around to making a few slideshow videos of the two koro at some point in the future.