HAPPENSTANCE OR SERENDIPITY

Recently on a Facebook Japanese pottery group page, someone posted a picture of a “disenpotteried”* wood box and asked if the empty box had or held value and are they worth collecting? There was an array of answers and viewpoints to which I added my own. Obviously, an empty box, first and foremost has a value to store something in that would need or benefit from a secure space. Secondly, there are collector’s and dealers who are acquiring wood boxes by a variety of well known potters among which potters like Itaya Hazan, Rosanjin, Kawai Kanjiro and Hamada Shoji likely rank near or at the top. The third option is that should you acquire a pot sans box, it is quite possible that could come across a box, signed by the exact potter and describing the exact nature of a pot you have in need of a home. I think that though an empty wood box does not have some inherent value its worth depends on the use and need of a collector.  

Case in point, a while back I acquired a rather dynamic kinuta, mallet vase that was unboxed. Normally I try to shy away from unboxed pieces but this was certainly the exception to the rule and was acquired on a ubiquitous auction site for a very reasonable price. At the time, I searched around and found a wood box that was perfect for storing the piece once the pot was no longer being displayed as we rotate our pots in part due to the lack of area to display pots properly. Two years passed and I was searching across several website and on another auction site I found a wonderful, signed, double boxed set, the exterior one lacquered that included a custom-made silk shifuku bag for a mallet vase which is common for the potter. I was fortunate to win the box/ bag set and ultimately the real cost was the shipping. When it arrived, I was truly shocked, inside the box was a xerox of the vase that belonged inside the set along with all kinds of paperwork related to the original purchase. The xerox and flyer both illustrated the very Tsukigata Nahiko Oni-Shino kinuta hanaire that I had collected several years previously. Happenstance or serendipity, the vase snug in its decorative silk suit is nestled in its double box and so when someone asks me, what is the value of an empty wood box, I guess it boils down to is your errant pot in need of its own personal space and what does the box actually say. I will mention that I know of two other such examples of pot and boxes being reunited, one a Kawai Kanjiro henko and the other an Itaya Hazan koro, I guess anything is possible.  

I know I have used this quote before but it makes so much sense;  “Serendipity always rewards the prepared.” Katori Hall  

(*likely not a real word)