HONGYO-ESQUE?

I have to be honest, I didn’t wake up one morning and think to myself, this is the exact thing I wish to pursue, to test and add my own spin to. Rather this started as a random testing accident and a love of a style that I first saw way back in the mid-1980s in the catalogue, ERDE UND FEUER. This German catalogue showcased a number of modern potters  and showed off and discussed the work of Mizuno Hanjiro. By way of a second admission, generally speaking I am not a huge folk art pottery guy but there was something so elemental and honest about his work and this large bowl in particular that has stuck in my mind, an indelible imprint if you will.    >After the initial test came out it became readily apparent it may only be a hop, skip and a jump away from the Hongyo-yaki inspired pieces I had seen all those years ago and this was the success after a run of line blends and misc. other attempts. This simple test cup was thrown and unevenly faceted and then glazed in two glazes before getting the Hongyo style washes applied. I tried to apply the washes evenly to try to control the running flow and realize that is going to be quite the chore and though I was pleased with these results for about ten minutes, the conclusion is, there is work to be done, more testing to do and a need to figure out where it will and will not work or enhance a pot form. Why can’t anything ever be easy.  

For those not totally up on Seto Hongyo-yaki, at the core of this enduring tradition is the multi-generational lineage of Mizuno Hanjiro, a family of potters who have championed the honest, unpretentious beauty of these folk ceramics (mingei) at the Hongyo-gama kiln. Facing the mid-twentieth-century onslaught of industrial incursion into the handmade and production of the items used in everyday life, Hongyo-yaki among many other pottery styles and crafts in general were threatened with what amounted to extinction. Mizuno Hanjiro found some measure of profound reassurance in the philosophy of Yanagi Sōetsu, Bernard Leach, and Hamada Shōji, who visited the kiln in 1964 and rather than succumbing to mass production or drifting into purely decorative territory, the Mizuno lineage doubled down on Seto’s core identity, utilizing local clays to create vessels with tremendous structural integrity and commanding posture especially as a reflection of the mingei movement. Using traditional wood firing, Hongyo-yaki is celebrated for its classic, robust Seto glazes, one such style can be seen in the attached illustration preserving a long-standing tradition as well as clarifying a voice most notably heard in the clay and pottery of Mizuno Hanjiro.