SENSIBILITY

A pottery collector friend of mine who only collects American pots asked me recently what it is about Japanese pots that has seduced away from more local pieces. I have thought about this for quite some time and I think for me there is a visual and visceral texture and authenticity to the pieces that like, they use tradition as a springboard and many rarely stray too far from that ideal but just enough to give voice to the clay which I should also note can be said for wide swaths of Western pottery. It is not that Japanese pottery is exotic but rather elemental and honest with dashes of panache, subtlety and rusticity that ends up being conversant to my sensibility, that creates an emotional resonance that I am truly captivated by.  

Illustrated is one of those pieces, totemic in presence and posture and all about surface and texture. Made by Nagaoka Masami, this appears to be hewn out of clay with direct and forceful facets and rough impact marks created by paddling. The two tiers appear like a medieval tower, fired in the path of an angry yet benevolent fire creating a surface of runny ash coating the surface creating a sense of wetness that goes on forever. This is exactly the type of work that drew me Japanese pottery though I do have to admit, Arakawa and Kawai Kanjiro had quite some magnetic attraction as well. I could go on but I think it is easy to see how I got here despite a love for most things made out of clay that show a well-conceived combination of form, texture, surface and concept, East or West.