RECIPRICOL

Recently a friend sent me three wonderful books as a gift, one of them was a large folio on Kawai Kanjiro and the binding is all handmade Japanese paper. Refusing payment, even for the postage I wondered what could I sent to offset this debt as we have something of a reciprocal back and forth going on, more of my pots seemed a bit insignificant and then along came a chawan. As I was searching the auctions, I came across what I thought was exactly the right chawan; exotic yohen temmoku surface, just a bit on the small side and what the dealer assured me was a bowl that was not too heavy. The recipient of the bowl is an avid tea drinker, putting his pots to hard use and he is rather particular about size, weight and of course aesthetics. Several weeks later the bowl arrived here and was shipped off to its new owner. 

The chawan is by Ii Koji who I know very little about though I have seen several chawan, a Kuan style celadon vase and misc. guinomi, yunomi and small plates. The surfaces are somewhat similar but I thought this one worked quite well among those that I have seen. With any luck this will find favor at its new home, be used hard, put away dry and enjoyed for many years to come.

BURUGURE

I have to admit, this covered jar was nearly impossible for me to photograph accurately. Thrown out of stoneware with black and then combed white slip, the base glaze was my Oribe and over that went two different iron glazes to the effect you see here. As you may be able to tell, the secondary glazes were applied to just below the combed slip and during the firing they all melted and ran down the pot thanks to our constant companions, gravity and thermodynamics. The result is a rather broody appearing slip-jar with a variety of colors running down the surface with the combed slip design calling out, what about me? This wasn’t exactly what I had been going for but considering this application had only been tried out on smaller pieces, I can’t honestly say that I really knew the final outcome. What I can tell you is that I had made five of these covered jars in total, two fairly traditional Oribe, one amber and then two in what ever this version of Kuro-Oribe should be called, maybe I should go with Burūgurē-Oribe moving forward?

MEMORIAL DAY 2025

 

COLLECTOR'S NIGHTMARE?

I realize it will likely sound like I am just droning on again about how differently pots can look from illustration to illustration or in person but I imagine this being the bane of many a collector's nightmares as a piece arrives and looks quite a bit different than expected. I should qualify this and say, this is not always a bad thing but in some instances the variation is too great and the piece is in the end, just not what was anticipated.  

Illustrated is a pot that to be honest at first glance doesn't look like its photo, this Shigaraki mizusashi by Suzuki Shigeji was illustrated in a volume of the GENDAI CHATO TAIKAN, as seen in the upper right corner showing off a nice, grey suit with blue tones and some charcoal effect. What I got to experience first and is to be honest much closer to my photo taken using a single tungsten bulb which is far more suited to the Shigaraki moniker showing everything from wet green to browns of various colors and tones.   

Aside for the color/ photo issues, this Suzuki mizusashi is all about the classics from form and potter's marks to the lid, lid placement and the wood fired surface, all indicative of a Shigaraki inspired traditional piece. Despite the overall appearance, the gallery where the lid fits is encircled with a ring of glass which is a nice detail that welcomes you as soon as you lift the lid. Covered pots have that sense of mystery, "what's in the box" as it were, is it cookies, seeds, dog food, who knows what and little details like a flowing green glass river around the form add to that sense of wonder. If only every lid hid such a surprise and whether by plan of serendipity, Suzuki Shigeji succeeded in adding that right amount of additional wonder to his ritual based wood fired jar.

MORE BLACK & WHITE

I can’t remember posting up any of this trailed glaze work before, so if I had, well, here it is again. The teabowl was thrown out of a small batch sandy whiter stoneware, glazed in a thin coat of a clear glaze and then I trailed over shiny, deep black decoration which under some lighting looks browner than it is intended to. The interior is also trail decorated tying the bowl together and then the foot is loosely tooled to give it an overall casual feel. Though it may not get noticed, this is just another incarnation of using more black and white surfaces that I seem to always come back to, in fact, I rely on this quite a bit more than almost any other surface, I wonder if at the end of the day if it is routine, habit or comfort that is the motivation?

SHOWING OFF

I am pretty sure the name Tabei Kenji is not exactly a household name in the West but for some while now I have encountered a number of his pots and to be honest each one has its own charm, each being a rather solid, functional work. Tabei’s life in pottery started while attending Waseda University before he moved on to work at the Gifu ceramics Experimentation Station (?) after which he left Japan to teach ceramics in Pakistan while studying the roots of Buddhism. Once he returned to Gifu prefecture, Yoroyama Village he founded his studio and later founded the Yoro-yaki Pottery Village and a pottery in Nago in Okinawa. His work seems centered around various Mino traditional styles as well as wood fired haikaburi techniques. 

Illustrated is an early, interesting wood fired yohen style Shino chawan that was thrown out of a sandy, buff clay with an array of color changes from a soft caramel colored surface to areas of rich red with ash effects as well as lustrous and iridescent details on the lip as well as punctuations making their way through the pours of the glaze. The intriguing surface clothes the form complete with throwing marks to a T while also hiding small areas of spatula work that break up the uniformity of the bowl. At its core, this was made as a rather practical chawan, there are no bells and whistles and the pragmatic form and well attended kodai are meant for use while through experience and firing the surface has added a rich environment to a pot that be just perfect in use or as I am constantly saying, just hanging out on a shelf and showing off just ever so slightly.

SAKE-WAN

On the whole, over the years I have not found many “raku” pieces that I have felt compelled to own if you exclude the various pieces at the Raku Museum and other similar venues. However, for some reason the raku work of Konishi Heinai II has always resonated with me, the surfaces, forms, firing and the way he finishes the kodai, all in all they just fell right to me and when it comes to this style of pottery, that is where my attention normally focuses. 

Illustrated is a simple little piece, entitled, “red sake bowl” this small pot is a spitting image of one of his larger chawan forms down to form, surface and the kodai, it isthe perfect mini-wan in this case intended for sake. The glaze is a wonderful landscape of colors, depth and texture where a universe’s totality seems painted within the overall surface just adding to the somewhat mysterious and contemplative narrative. Not to sound redundant, but I don’t usually go for raku pottery, but when I do, I choose Heinai, Konishi Heinai II.

DUSTED AND REVISITED

Okay, full disclosure, this is a bowl I have posted previously but recently rephotographed it once it was thoroughly dusted and clean. This teabowl is one of my saffron yellow over Hagi glazed bowls and I think this revisited image really shows off the character of the surface. The bowl was a small batch clay which once fired punctuates the glaze surface and adds quite a bit to the overall appearance of the piece. The real reason I have hung on to the teabowl all this time is that this is the best this glaze can be, others come very close but for some reason for a dip it in white and dip it in iron piece, the surface is just exactly what I want from this glaze and in fact there were actually three teabowls and a mizusashi in that firing that all came out at this level but I stubbornly held this on a shelf where as I mentioned it was covered in several years’ worth of dust. Now rephotographed it was placed back on the very same shelf in the very same spot where it is likely to collect several more years of dust before I pull it down again and ask, why can’t they all come out this way?

SHELFIE*

This is a quick “shelfie”* I took for the Japanese studio pottery group over on Face Book yesterday. In this picture there is a large Shigaraki tsubo by Kohyama Yasuhisa, carved wood Kannon figure, a large Warren MacKenzie stoneware charger and the small but wonderful little “feelie” by Rose Cabat. I am pretty sure most of these have been posted before but here they are in situ, a group that has been out on display for quite some time now. Though our collection is quite modest in size, we rarely have many pots out, rather, they are rotated from display to storage as it were over the year. I often think this keeps us from getting complacent with the pieces and their re-emergence is quite special though on that rare occasion a piece comes out of hibernation and fails to impress, time to go. This is our way of displaying pots which keeps the environment in constant flux, just the way we want it.  

(*Shelfie was not my idea, it came from a Face Book group on Japanese pottery)

IRON FOREST

I wonder if John Heywood included this Renaissance proverb in his anthology (1546) if he saw into the future, seeing this mounted tile ala his contemporary Nostradamus. The proverb I was referencing is “Can’t see the forest for the trees”, which may or may not apply to this large glazed landscape tile by Kimura Morinobu but is certainly easy to see where it could. Made of thick and heavy (!) stoneware, the slab is decorated using iron and ash to present both the forest and the trees in a semi-abstract manner, aptly entitled, “Mori” or Forest. Starting in the early 90s Kimura Morinobu began using this design quite a bit depicting both cat-tails and trees using a clear style ash glaze and deep, rich iron on all types of two- and three-dimensional pots where the cat-tails became a favorite on larger tsubo with a nuka style glaze. 

In the book, KIMURA MORINOBU; Sakutoh Go-Ju Nen 1951 to 2000, there is much larger forest tile decorated in a nearly exact approach as this framed one, the date is 1996 (Heisei 8) while this one is not illustrated it was exhibited at the Osaka Takashimaya Department Store sometime in the mid to late 1990s. All in all this is a rather nice presentation of another dimension of a potter who has dedicated a life to his pottery art and in this case conjures up an iron forest with nothing more than a paintbrush , a bit of clay and some toasty temperature.

EoD

Full disclosure, this was one of those end of day, what are you thinking pots, there is only one and more than likely there will only ever be one. I remember that it was later afternoon and I was trying to decide, make something spontaneously or just call it a day and this is what I ended up with, thrown out of stoneware in two parts, it was luted together after a few minutes under the watchful eye of the heat gun and then later tooled. Once bisque, I glazed it Oribe as the base and then sprayed it to give it the Kuro-Oribe treatment to this effect. I do realize to get good at this form, one off likely won’t get me there but the bigger question is, is this form something I wish to pursue?

THREE MOVES LATER

So this slipware cider jug has a short backstory that goes back over two decades, 2001 to be precise. One year we were gifted this Ray Finch Winchcombe cider jug by Dan Shutt, a very good friend and antique dealer as an anniversary gift. Dan new of my interest in Michael Cardew, Winchcombe and of course slipware so when he ran across it at Brimfield, the large flea market in Massachusetts he struck up a conversation with a dealer from England who brought a container of English antiques with him, this jug among them. After some clever negotiations, there were no other kind from Dan’s end, he acquired the jug complete with its original spout to boot. Fast forward nearly a year and on a trek up from Delaware to see us in CT he brought along the jug and gifted it to us where we have had it out and about ever since that first encounter. With Dan’s passing, every time I see the pot, just above eye level, I am reminded of Dan; his humor, tenacity, generosity and his humanity, is there any better way to enjoy a good pot?           

As for this Finch jug, the surface of this red clay had a coat of black to brown slip applied where it appears either or depending on the lighting together with a slip trailed decoration around the entire form. The whole pot is rather sturdy in its throwing with a thickly potted mouth and a strong and very functional handle also decorated with slashes of slip. This is clearly intended as a rugged and functional pot and clearly succeeded in that task though it still sits mighty pretty on a shelf, three moves later where it is looked at several times or more a day.

WHAT I LIKE ABOUT YOU II

I first salt fired quite a long while ago and have always had a soft spot for salt fired pots, in fact before I even made pots I was in love with the early salt and wood fired pottery for 19^th century America, many of which were around my in-laws home. Having a fondness for salt fired pieces, beyond the obvious Hamada pieces, I have been attracted to the simple pots based on Kyoto aesthetics of Iwabuchi Shigeya which as I have mentioned before may have been our very first internet purchase back in the very late 90s.    

Illustrated is a simple Haku-Enyu mizusashi with a thick crackle style slip over a buff stoneware now darkened to a toasty brown from the firing. On the face and back of this form, shaped like a rhombus, are flora designs, resisted in the slip application which now stand in perfect contrast to the pure white texture of the overall form though there are some areas of pink blushing and subtle gohonde style spotting. The mizusashi is finished off with a crisp, tapered lip in which a classic, custom roiro-urushi lid fits to complete the form both functionally and visually. When asked recently what I liked about the rather simple and older style piece, the truth is, just about everything.