SQUARED²

I encountered my first pottery by Sakata Deika XIII at the home of the late Dr. Fred Baekeland where he and his wife generously showed my wife and I pot after pot without hesitation along with Meiji era scrolls and Nihonga paintings. The pots we saw at this time, perhaps 1990 or so was an Ido style chawan and a cylindrical vase about 11" tall. Both were nice but we had our sights set on something else but the encounter was more than enough to turn intrigue into interest. On our second trip to Japan we went to a department store exhibition of his work and we were fortunate enough to meet Sakata-san where he autographed a catalogue for us and we purchased a guinomi, all that we could honestly afford. As time passed I collected catalogues from his exhibitions and then acquired the large Kodansha modern Japanese pottery series in which he was featured. One piece in the section on Sakata Deika stood out, the marvelous squared kinute hanaire covered in a wonderful white Hagi glaze which would remain as one of a dozen or so holy grail pots for several decades. 

Fast forward to this year and we encounted this kaku-gata kinuta hanaire that is a very close approximation to the piece illustrated from 1975. As you can see the base is broad and strongly modelled with a tall, vertical spire like neck cutting the perfect proportions for this form. The mouth is every so slightly crumbled and rough in direct juxtapostion to the rest of the pot which has a nearly perfect geometrical figure all laid out by the crisp and defined edges where thinned down or rubbed glaze shows iron like boundaries. As for the base, the glaze appears to be casually applied where it allows the fired iron slip to play its role in this two part harmony that is what I consider a squared square, several times over.