BIG, BIGGER & EVEN BIGGER

I'll caution you up front, this is another one of those "way back when" stories involving one of our trips to Japan in the mid-90s. While walking down the antique row in Kyoto we saw three wonderful tsubo in a window, big, bigger and even bigger is probably the best way to describe them, all three where Hagi and made by Yamato Yasuo. The biggest one measured almost 20" tall and equally as wide and had a tremendous sense of scale and volume with a animated surface of poured slip with a glaze over and quite a few areas of gohonde. Of course we fell in love with the biggest one and discussed purchasing it for the longest time, really until we were on a bus headed for the airport a week or so later but at the time couldn't figure out how to get it home or how to pay off the credit card bill!      

All these years later by a chance encounter what should we encounter but another of these large Hagi tsubo covered in ladle poured slip and patches of gohonde. Did I mention this tsubo is large (by Japanese pottery standards) measuring just a bit over 18" by 18" and to the best of our recollection is pretty true to the original pot that set the spark way back when in the first place. The form has a rather palpable tension as the piece is the definition of volume to the point of appearing ready to burst held intact by the colored and animated surface creating a wonderful narrative landscape around the tsubo. This is perhaps not the best photo of this pot but due to the size it was rather impractical to try to photograph in the space I currently use which is only 16" tall but I think the general idea of the pot is there to see, in other words this is the picture I took and the one you get, for now.