O-TSUBO

I am reasonably sure that many visitors to Shigaraki have seen this somewhat large (!) Ko-Shigaraki O-Tsubo on display at the small museum of mostly historic pottery located downtown (I am sorry the name escapes me at the moment). When people talk about large Japanese pots, this is always the piece that springs to my mind as I stand 6'2" and it was rather impressive and almost my size, in height, luckily not width or circumference. I realize this is not the best photo, it was originally a poorly lit picture with a negative now decades old but it still gives a sense of the scale and granduer of this large early tsubo. perhaps my favorite features of this behemoth are the indented furrows, three of them surrounding the based and the strong, defined mouth and lip with just enough movement and undulation to really call attention to its features. As I mentioned, to me this is a big pot and moving forward I guess in any description using the word or term large, there should likely be a number of caveats which include a link back to this pot for reference.