VARIA

I have to admit, when I think of most Kawai-mon, Kawai school pots, I think of rather straightforward surfaces, they are beautiful but as for complexity and depth, that is somewhat rarer an encounter. To my surprise, I have a recent opportunity to acquire what I expected was a simple, large chawan by Kawai Hirotsugu directly out in the style of his master Kanjiro but upon arrival, I was more than pleasantly surprised. As you may surmise, within the iron temmoku glaze and splashes of red and green there is depth, complexities like looking into the varia of hataraki in hamon of a Japanese sword. The iron surface gives way to ashy ambers filled with small crystals, islands of tessha, blue to green streaks running from the splashed decoration and layers of boundaries around most of the additions to the base glaze. In no means trying to oversell this chawan but it is more of an anomaly than an everyday experience where I suspect the glazing and the heat had a fair degree more influence of the outcome than it normally does. Though I have handled at least two dozen pots by Kawai Hirotsugu, some have had hints of this complexity but this was the first encounter where the surface is composed of layers of complexity both bold and subtle with each effect as welcome as a long-lost friend.