Illustrated is a rather well fired Shigaraki chawan by
Minagawa Takashi, son of Kiyotaka and pupil of Komori Shoan. The bowl is broad
and the lift makes it appear a bit like it is floating just off the surface
which adds a nice touch to the visual. The bowl was thrown and then a Matsukawa-hada
style texture was impressed or beaten into the surface giving the bowl a lot of
visual and actual texture that has an immediacy to it. This bowl wants to be
held, fondled even to fill in any and all blanks you may have from the
encounter which is typical of much of Minagawa Takashi’s work. As you can see,
much of the bowls exterior has a perpetually wet sheen baked into the all-natural
ash surface which in my book is a plus, the interior shows a dazzling pool of
ash and lends itself quite enthusiastically to use. The lip may look a bit
blunt, it is perfectly formed for use with tea or any other liquid you can
impress into service and the foot makes for a simple, effective and ideal
pedestal made for stability and another enjoyable feature while resting in the
hand.
This chawan was photographed a short while
back while it seemed like there would never be any sunlight again. I took a
number of the “Hollywood back drop” style photos of which this is one of them.
It occurs to me that without some context, the background may be a bit iffy to
figure out and so a degree of explanation is in order. During a torrential downpour
during last spring, I opened the side window and decided to shoot the rain using
the fastest shutter speed possible on my primitive and outdated camera and of
the photos, this particular shot intrigued me the most and I decided to use it
as a backdrop moving forward. It may seem a bit odd but I have noticed that it
tends to make pots, chawan mostly look a bit like they are quite three
dimensional so, not such a random photo after all, I hope you agree.
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