HIDDEN ASSETS

I am sure I am not alone in this, I suspect every collector has a potter or two that they think of as hidden assets among modern Japanese pottery. They are potters where you just like the way they work, fire, handle clay, decorate, their pots speak to you but in the general collecting scheme of things they are not one of the “top dogs”, they are not LNT or on the circuit of the big galleries but to you, there pots are rather underrated. When I think of these potters, I constantly come back to this motto I have come up with where “it is better to have a great pot by a good potter than a good pot by a great potter”. Seeing where a potter has excelled beyond his skill set, these are pots than speak to me and at their core carry out a long and lasting conversation over the years and even decades.   

Among this group of hidden assets, I count the work of Masamune Satoru and Kimura Morinobu at the top of my go to group of good potters who make great pots and this chawan is just another classic example of that philosophy. This Chinese inspired temmoku chawan was made by Kimura Morinobu likely during the 90s and has a wonderful, celestial style surface of minute iron crystals punctuated across the surface inside and out and further arranged by the five-point hoshi star burst in the center of the bowl. This bowl was thrown thinly and has almost seems weightless in the hand, the fine form culminates in a thin, delicate lip and a shallow cut kodai harkening back to numerous Chinese temmoku archetypes. This chawan typifies what draws me to Kimura’s ash or iron glazed ware; thoughtful and considered forms, glazing, decoration and firing, what more could one hope for from a potter?