IRON AND A BIT MORE

Back in June I put up a blog post on a rather rich and noble tetsu-yu chawan by Kimura Morinobu that happened to be illustrated in a retrospective book on his work over 50 years. Two months pass and another tetsu-yu chawan comes my way, this one not illustrated in a book but rather an exhibition catalogue from the 1990's. This chawan has both a somewhat similar yet different presence to it with a form just a bit more open and low and a surface of the palest green ash glaze surrounded by crystalized iron creating the illusion of some distant cosmic landscape where some star clustered nebula peers out from a backdrop of varying effects created in space. I should say that when I first saw the photo of this chawan in an exhibition catalogue, admittedly I thought it a bit flat, perhaps dull but with just the right amount of light the surface just springs to life composed of iron and a bit more. The real story of this chawan is that it clearly far exceeds one's expectations where decades of experience bring clay, glaze and fire to mingle together under the watchful hand and eye of the potter, Kimura Morinobu.