This morning I happened to spot a rather familiar looking Iga henko form on Instagram and that made me go back and look through my archive of photos on the hard drive to come up with this particular photo. As I mentioned, the two pieces could in fact be from the same series made within hours or days of each other and both fired in the same kiln but that being posited the truth is that I have now seen five of these forms by Iga potter, Imura Mitsuo who learned a great dealer from his teacher, Sugimoto Sadamitsu an influence that is easy to see in how the clay is handled and the pots are fired. As for the five similar henko, two were in catalogues/ magazines, one was shared by a friend over the internet, two of the pieces were seen in hand and lastly there was the one this morning on Instagram. Now if the math doesn't add up in your book that is because this piece is also one of the two illustrated in a catalogue, just wanted to get that out in the open.
This Iga henko is a perfect size, it is about 14" or so long and was made with a wonderful taper moving toward the sides emanating out from the well considered and crumbly style texture to the mouth. Perhaps one rather interesting feature to this piece as with most that I have seen it that it was fired on their sides allowing for the ash built up during the firing to cascade down the surface making for a rather dramatic and effective look on the pot. The surface of the piece is a wonderful narrative of the possibilities of firing from a bit of hiiro fire color to green glass like ash, long, determined ash flow and areas of carburized surface where charcoal built up around the base of the pot as it was fired telling its story of creation. All in all, the form of this henko by Imura Mitsuo works very well with the manner in which it was fired with its varied surfaces, well enough I should say that there are a number of these pots floating around out there and if one is good, more is always better.
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