PARTS CLAY, GLAZE & MAGIC

There is absolutely nothing like the strong posture of a chawan by Kawai Kanjiro. The wide, bold foot acts as a defining pedestal to what at first glance looks like a common bowl form but with closer inspection it shows its user friendly attributes where it sits well in the hand, has an appropriate weight and the lip is out turned just enough to let slip the right amount of liquid. All of these considerations were honed by Kawai over a lifetime of work and experience, through trial and error and an eye for the simplest yet often overlooked details, the master creates a work that has been stripped to the least amount of detail yet creates a pot of supreme beauty and utility. This wan-gata style chawan has a rich iron temmoku glaze over areas of thick slip "patted" on to the surface dividing the bowl in to sections and creating visual depth and movement but born of equal parts clay, glaze and a little bit of magic. There is mastery and mystery married in the works of Kawai Kanjiro that has as much meaning and relevance today as they did over well over five decades ago which can be summed up in one word; timeless.

STILL BLUE

Illustrated is a bottle vase with a hakeme slip surface under the latest incarnation of my Ao+ glaze. I throw the body of the bottle and neck separately for ease sake and then put it together and slip them making the whole process a snap. I put the slip on about a quarter of an inch thick and then comb it creating deep valleys and high points that react differently to the glaze and the touch making for the most amount of variation as is possible. I am rather pleased with this gosu like glaze and find it is highly effective over different designs, decorations and slips and works well with a large number of forms as well. Though this bottle is not terribly large it has a good presence and is made just a little bit taller through the use of the vertical combing. I will not say anything conclusively but I may be at the end of testing for this particular glaze as it does just about everything I was hoping it would do, I guess I am on to the next glaze.

AO+

There is certainly no denying the fact that I am enthralled with the work of Kawai Kanjiro and one of my goals over the past couple of years is to get close to a real gosu style glaze that is compatible with the way I work and the forms that I work with. I have always been drawn to the gosu of Kawai, all the way back to my first encounter in the early eighties; the depth, the possibilities and the mysterious qualities that hang like diaphanous silk on a form is unlike any other surface I can think of. Truthfully though, I am not looking to just copy Kawai's gosu, rather take the aspects that I love and create my own glaze, a glaze that is simpatico with my way of working and the pots I make. Fast forward to the past couple of months and I have gotten as close to the gosu that I really want as I could imagine. My Ao+ is fairly rich and has a wide array of nuances that are hard to photograph, breaking on ridges and high points, it is always just one tweak away from exactly what I see in my mind's eye. Perhaps in the next incarnation, it will be absolutely perfect, though fully aware of my nature, maybe it will be the version after that.

"Perfection is acquired by slow degrees; it requires the hand of time." Francios-Marie Arouet (1694-1778)