MARU-GATA

Looking a bit like a weathered and almost barren celestial planet (body), this Iga tsubo was made by Furutani Michio back in the early 1990s. Though I had almost forgotten about our encounter, finding a group of older photos taken and stored originally on discs, I immediately remembered the pot and its simple but excellent form and the areas of ash and shell impressions decorating the surface. Though I have seen these forms quite large what stood out about this pot was that it is basically about 20cm in diameter making for an intimate pot that sits well and fits in the palm of your hand for closer examination. There are a number of this form of all sizes and varying texture in TOH Vol. 2 showing precedance for this form among many others and I should mention on a trip to see Furutani-san in 1991 or 1992 he gave us a small catalogue from a show related to the Northern Lights in which many of the pots were these round maru-tsubo from really small to quite large. This was an enjoyable pot to handle and its reminder in these photos is rather welcome though I wish I had taken more pictures back then and certainly in much higher resolution.  

"The lamp once out    

cool stars enter   

The window frame."  Natsume Soseki