BRIEF ENCOUNTER

I had an extremely brief encounter with a rather nice pot by Takauchi Shugo yesterday at which time I took a lot of photos of it and then posted it up on Trocadero all as a favor to a friend. The pot in question is the illustrated Oribe te-oke, perhaps the quintessential form associated with Takauchi Shugo in which the the clay was roughly thrown leaving a variety of marks around the piece at which time he then hacked away vertical channels disrupting the surface and adding a sense of dramatic tension and even a hint of aggression to the piece. The top of the form was also quickly cut and a handle was skillfully added to the form which adds a striking visual presence to the pot and then it was glazed and fired in his trademark, rich Oribe glaze which has accentuated every mark made. The encounter of about two hour was brief as it went about as quickly as it arrived; it arrived, it was re-packed, it was shipped. I enjoyed this brief encounter but would have been just as happy have more time to spend with it but hopefully the 100+ photos and possible slideshow video down the road will be reminder enough of the time spent well.

C&A

I just put together this short video slideshow of a nice Hamada Shoji nuka and tetsu vase that came my way. I know everyone has their own reasons why they like Hamada's work but the characteristics that sticks out in my mind is that his pots are both casual and authentic. This nuka pot, like the bulk of Hamada's pottery is direct, there is nothing fussy or over thought about them, they appeal on both an intellectual and gestural level and like most great pottery fill an emotional need for objects that are created to fulfill unique roles in our daily lives even if a bit out of step with our modern times. I think that pots like those by Hamada tap in to some mysterious, deep seated sub-conscious where people needed pots, ceramics to live, function and even survive day to day and season to season. I hope this video helps impart the casual, authentic nature and various details to give a fuller account of a typical Hamada Shoji Mashiko pot.

MONOCHROME HENKO

There is not a lot I can say about this wonderful ink wash by Mashiko legend, Hamada Shoji. Painted in simple monochrome, this ink sketch captures everything one can imagine regarding his molded vase forms together with a fluid and spontaneous rendering of his iconic sugarcane motif. Hamada has easily captured the volume and scale of the pot which would be a more than welcome addition to any collector who actually owns such a henko. I have seen several pot and painting combos over the years and it would seem with enough patience and money, a pairing is not necessarily out of the question. Happy hunting!

SHARED PSYCHOSIS

There is just something so intoxicating about a good wood fired pot. Over the years I have tried to put my finger on exactly why they are so appealing but as I ask the question an exact reason still escapes me. There is something so elemental, primal and honest about the process of shaping clay and placing it within a kiln and then unleashing a premordial energy and ferocity into the mix which despite a potters best intention and skill does what ever the heck it wants. The truth is that every firing is different than the previous for a variety of reasons from how packed the kiln is, placement of pots, stoking, external temperature, barametric pressure and any other variable that can create great pieces or doom a firing. The illustrated bowl shows off the potential of a well placed bowl in a woodkiln and the mastery of a potter who knows how to exploit his clay, process and firing. Made by Shimaoka Tatsuzo this wonderful bowl shows off his skillful zogan technique together with a rich  rusty purple fire color and a face covered in running ash where the piece confronted the fire, head on. I may not have figured out exactly where the love of such pots stems from deep in my psyche but I take solace in knowing that I am not alone.

HOW SWEET IT IS

This particular guinomi is one of those small gems that make it easy to understand not only the love of saké but of guinomi, salt firing, wood firing and the work of Ningen Kokuho, Shimaoka Tatsuzo. Though diminutive in scale, the is nothing small in the execution, design and firing of this guinomi having all of the bells and whistles a viewer or collector would want from the potter. From form, purposeful and well cut foot, impressed rope decoration and a mixed, misty infusion of cobalt from the salt and ash from the wood firing, everything comes together to paint a portrait of a perfect Shimaoka piece. All that is left is to get out a truly wonderful bottle of bourbon (or saké) and revel in "how sweet it is".

CAMELLIA MIZUSASHI

At first glance, I am reminded of the earlier works of the late Mashiko Ningen Kokuho, Tamura Koichi as well as another potter many thousands of miles away, John Glick but as you study this pot, the image there are tell tale signs that it was the ex-salary man turned potter Takauchi Shugo that made this inspired mizusashi. If you start by looking past the surface, the form is somewhat similar to those used by Takauchi early in his career along with those of angled planes creating unique and interesting pottery that was either simply glazed and reduction fired or at times salt and wood fired. Once you turn your attention to the surface the use of slips, oxides, carving and sgrafitto are all classic techniques that Shugo has employed through his entire career as an innovative potter; his use of space and movement through design is a particular hallmark. To finish off the pot, Takauchi Shugo has used a hexagonal, recessed lid that fits the piece quite well and the stylized animal knob is seen on a number of his earlier thrown and hand built pots that have lids. Though I can still see the influence of Tamura Koichi's camellia blossom tsubo which was made in the very late 1960's, how can a potter not be influenced by one of the giant's of Mashiko while remaining true to his personal vision and vocabulary.

PERSPECTIVE

perspective; pər-ˈspek-tiv, the capacity to view things in their true relations or relative importance

Every now and again my wife will look at a pot up on my blog and tell me that I need to add something to help define the size and volume of a pot. On eBay I have seen pop cans, cigarette lighters and packs, dollar bills and a host of other daily objects but I just don't find my way to using these objects, I would rather let the photo imply the size and let the viewer work out the mental math and imagery. In my years of making pots, loading kilns and making commissions I think I have become rather adept at understanding volume in the abstract until every once and a while a pot will show up that just defies the actual dimensions and the scale and volume catch me off guard.

Illustrated is a pot, well actually two pots that arrived here within a few days of each other by sheer happenstance and an example of not being fully prepared for the size of a piece. What you are looking at is a good size Shino chawan over 13cm across by Matsuzaki Ken inside a rather large Shino O-tsubo by the same potter which I thought may illustrate the point of perspective. The chawan was carefully placed inside the o-tsubo which are both glazed in the same fashion, a thin coat of Shino with a much thick, viscous layer of Shino being applied with the potter's hand and raked and in the doing leaving swaths of almost pure white in his wake. The two pots from different sources were both wood fired and have areas of various other effects across the surface including rich, iridescent yohen and ash dusted about the surfaces and interior of the chawan. The other interesting thing about these pieces is that both of them were bought out of exhibitions in Japan and are both illustrated in the accompanying catalogues. Maybe my wife is right, sometimes using the right object to show scale and volume is exactly what is called for.

STAPLE

When you think of the larger pottery studios across Japan the constant hum and bustle of the master, apprentices and other various works brings to life the pottery of every day use throughout the country. These big potteries produce functional and utilitarian ware in every conceivable shape, size and surface from Bizen, Oribe, Shino, Shigaraki and of course Mashiko to name but a few. Illustrated is what is arguably the definitive kyusu style teapot direct for Mashiko and the studio of the late master, Shimaoka Tatsuzo. Created with pure function and elemental aesthetics in mind, this style of teapot is a pleasure to use and contemplate while enjoying one's tea. The angles of the comfortable handle and well constructed spout are perfect for the task and the lid sits just deeply enough in the gallery to stay put while the classic Shimaoka surface adds more to the experience than just the simple act of pouring tea. Though based on a number of archetypes that proceeded it, this teapot is a quintessential staple of the Shimaoka pottery and all those apprentices who came and went over the decades of such considered and thoughtful design and production.

A LITTLE RED, A LITTLE GREEN

Illustrated is a truly wonderful and inspirational Okinawan style chawan by Hamada Shoji. White slip over stoneware with a clear glaze and iron lip accented by the two color enamel decoration of Hamada's sugarcane design makes this bowl come alive and jump out of the photo. A delicate balance of humility, folk craft and intellect this chawan is decorated in a vivid green and red enamel, the brushwork appears fluid, effortless and immediate. These are all of trademark characteristics of a master in full command of a technique that is as much muscle memory as it is unconscious action, capturing the spontaneity born from a life time dedicated and immersed in pottery and craft. There is very little that can be said about Hamada Shoji, his pottery and his unique decoration that has not been said before but I will only add this play on the mingei axiom, "beauty born of use" to say; this is beauty born of doing.

PREDICTABILITY

Based on where you study and with whom, it is still not easy to predict how a potter will work or where his evolution take him, even when your master was Mashiko legend, Hamada Shoji. Such is evidently the case when looking at the Shigaraki influenced, wood fired pottery of Hashimoto Makoto where a good portion of his work is more like Sueki ware than modern Mashiko-yaki. Taking its cue from perhaps some tea house surroundings or a Japanese garden, this stacked stone mizusashi has an ancient and weathered appearance with hints of the mysterious regarding its true nature. Fired in a wood fired kiln the surface of the pot has areas of ash deposits with a tell tale signs of charcoal induced reduction greys across much of the pot where the two lids, one ceramic and one roiro black urushi create very different looks for the tea piece. I must confess this is one of the more intriguing and enigmatic pieces that I have handled in quite some time and a testament to just how far one can follow their own voice even if their teacher was Hamada Shoji.

You can see more of this distinct mizusashi over at my Trocadero marketplace;
http://www.trocadero.com/stores/albedo3studio/items/1338581/item1338581store.html

HAIYU

Illustrated is a rather simple form with a lurid, almost lyrical incised decoration running around the piece creating a sense of perpetual motion. The pot was glazed in a rich Mashiko ash glaze (haiyu) and then was wood fired by the potter, Matsuzaki Ken with the results being framed in ash over ash making for a rather rustic chawan. The incised decoration has filled with the glaze and natural ash from the firing to fill the channels and present a rich and dark decoration which moves freely about the pot. This combination makes for a wonderful blend of the formal and the common while adding to the tactile experience the piece has to offer. It never ceases to amaze me that the confluence of a lump of clay, a simple wood tool and a few materials mixed with water can combine to create such a pleasant vessel with just the slight help of a good potter.

YET ANOTHER

Illustrated is yet another uzukumaru style vase with a shoulder blanketed in ash and a cascade that encircles the pieces in 360 degrees. This uzukumaru has a decorated shoulder as well but in this case it is not the classic Shigaraki fence design but rather a series of arabesque slashes and cuts in the clay that makes for a rich border around this robust pot. Though seemingly a classic style Shigaraki piece this pot hails from Mashiko and was made by veteran potter Takauchi Shugo (b.1937). Most likely best known for his Shino and Oribe pottery, Shugo has produced a number of classically inspired pots that have been wood fired without glaze (yakishime) and are haikaburi style. This sturdy and classic piece was made in the early 1990's and has a wonderful array of wood fired effects with a well addressed mouth and neck and rather fanciful decoration with a lyrical quality. Though made a distance from Shigaraki, this pot embodies the feudal spirit of the archetypical uzukumaru while blending traditionalism with spontaneous expressionism (of design) that Takauchi Shugo is well known for.

BEST POTS

There is a tremendous sense of economy and calculated simplicity when it comes to the chawan of Hamada Shoji. I am always impressed by the totality of his experience and years of repetition that have distilled form and function to a point where simplicity and economy reign supreme. This chawan is noble in its austerity, a form where the superfluous has been abandoned, the decoration is as elemental as possible and the use of a single glaze that has a great variety in its surface are all of the trademarks that create a bowl where neither editing or adjustments are either needed or possible. Few potters can make such a chawan and Hamada excelled at the art of the rustic which is so clearly on display in this ame-yu chawan. As I ponder the phenomenal array of modern pottery, there are few who can take such a simple bowl and create so much out of so little, culminating in a conversation that cuts across time and culture so effortlessly as the chawan of Hamada Shoji.

"These are the best pots, if they can be done at the best times." Shoji Hamada (from the book SHOJI HAMADA by Susan Peterson),

SALTY

Illustrated is a simple molded vase by Mashiko legend and Ningen Kokuho; Hamada Shoji. This piece was first molded and then had trails of slip applied as only the master could do and finally had pigment brushed vertically at various points to highlight the areas of pure white slip. The pot was then loaded and fired in a salt kiln creating this subtle but unique surface which in this case is covered in an extremely fine pebbled texture, likely fired somewhere in the back of the kiln, the front reserved for Hamada's best work and tea wares. Though hundreds of these pots were made, each is separate and distinct due to the individuality of not only the slip and brushwork but the effects and variations created in the salty atmosphere. I am particularly attracted to the slip decoration at the far left where the pigment has gone from a subtle blue at the top to a soft, spring like green at the bottom. I think the surface would keep even the casual viewer engaged in a conversation about all the distinct possibilities that salt has to offer.

VOLUME

According to the dictionary, "volume is the quantity of three-dimensional space enclosed by some boundary", but what this definition is a bit short on creating is a real world perspective of what the volume of something, say a pot, truly means. If you have handled an o-buri chawan by Kumano Kuroemon, you will understand what I am talking about. If you are told the dimensions of his chawan, your mind and experience think, wow, that is a big bowl, but in hand and truly expressing the sense of volume of the pot, your immediate thought is WOW, that really is a big chawan. What really brings this up is that in the past two months, I have had three pots pass through my hands that I knew the dimensions, but in each case as they were unpacked, I was immediately awed by the sense of volume that they contained and the volume of space that they commanded. The three pots, a Kumano chawan, a tall vase by Kaneta Masanao and a stunning hakuji vase by Mashiko veteran, Hirosaki Hiroya. The impressive aspect of each of these pot is not simply about scale and actual volume, rather it is as much about how each command both their physical space and the space in which they are put. Though all objects will have some sense of volume, fewer yet can command the volume in which they are surrounded.

Illustrated is a tall Hagi vase form by kurinuki master, Kaneta Masanao. At over 14" tall, the vessel is impressive and imposing, commanding its space much like an ancient medieval citadel. The pot is glazed in a Shiro-Hagi glaze that has significant areas of blushed pinkish hues over half of the form and vivid areas of intense white speckles interrupting the absolute purity of the form. There are black highlights which define the form and process that peer out from underneath the glaze adding additional definition to the form and at the top of the form and on to one side there is a keyhole style opening cut out to complete the function of the form. In a static photo, volume can be hinted at, but it is only in person that the volume can be felt and fully appreciated.

"The world is full of magic things, patiently waiting for our senses to grow sharper."  W.B. Yeats (1865-1939)

WOOD & CLAY

Illustrated on the left is an austere and weathered wooden kizuchi style mallet, in its own way, it has a sculptural presence and is classical mingei. It is mallets exactly like this one that have inspired potters to turn wood in to clay over a number of centuries and this particular example makes a great test subject. The pot on the right is a rather old haiyu glazed kinuta vase by "ex-salary man" and Mashiko staple; Takauchi Shugo. Created rather early in his pottery career, probably in the mid-1970s, this piece is another simple and casually thrown pot with just the right balance of proportions, throwing marks and gesture to make for a successful form. The use of a thick and runny ash glaze creates further movement in the pot creating dark areas where the glaze has settled in to the throwing lines and the way the glaze is running down the neck creates a wonderful vertical sense to the piece as well as creating a rich pool in the depressed area of the shoulder. Though made early on, this pot shows the individuality, skill and sense of proportion of form that has set Takeuchi Shugo's pottery apart from most potters today.

"That so few now dare to be eccentric marks the chief danger of our times."  John Stuart Mill (1806-1873)

LYRICAL PATTERN

A friend sent me this picture that he found somewhere on the web, so I apologize if this is your picture. At first glance it looks like a Kawai school pot, possibly even Ueda Tsuneji, but in fact, it is another Kimura Ichiro molded vase, this time in vivid and active nerikomi patterning. Using his stoneware with oxides to darken it, Kimura made slabs out of the three clays, patterned together to push into a press mold made in the style of his teacher, Hamada Shoji. This bottle shape is very common and it is the subtle nuances that sets the potters apart as much as the decoration and glazing. The bottle, glazed in a thin clear has developed wonderfully lyrical pattern which emphasizes not only the vertical but the horizontal nature of the pot. I love the movement of the pot and once again, Kimura proves the value of two tried and true techniques in molded bottle and nerikomi but succeeds in making a personal statement with his own creative voice within the large body of Mashiko pottery.

"A man's style is his mind's voice. Wooden minds, wooden voices."   Ralph Waldo Emerson

GAMEDAY

After my post of the Kimura "cubist" henko, I was asked about the so-called football style henko. First off, the football moniker is entirely mine and it is how I see the piece from the perspective of viewing it straight on. Illustrated is one of these molded football pots that I handled a number of years ago. Once the pot came out of the plaster press mold, it was dipped in slip and once bisque, it was glazed in a transparent ash clear glaze with a rich kaki accent on the mouth and decorations of amber spots with copper squiggles over the whole in an Okinawan (Tsuboya )style. The pot looks very dated as it appears having been made sometime in the late 1950's or 1960's, but when used as a vase, it takes on an entirely different appearance. Ultimately, it is the simplicity of design and decoration and a dependence on the Mashiko tradition that makes exploring the works of Kimura Ichiro so enjoyable.

THOROUGHLY MASHIKO

My first encounter with the work of Kimura Ichiro was back in the very early 1980's, I had acquired a group of exhibition catalogues from a book dealer and among them was one on Kimura from 1976. There was quite the array of pieces from thrown to the molded henko pots and each had a distinctly folk art look of Mashiko-yaki. On our first trip to Japan in 1990 and subsequent ones we were able to see a large number of his pots especially in Mashiko, where his work was displayed in a number of galleries. What became immediately apparent was that while Hamada Shoji was a product of a variety of his experiences and travels, it is safe to say, Kimura Ichiro was a product of Mashiko and the community and lifestyle that Hamada and other Mashiko potters had crafted out of a long standing craft tradition. Kimura Ichiro (1915-1978) studied with Hamada Shoji prior to WW II and after his apprenticeship set up his studio and kiln in Mashiko and fired his first kiln load of pots in1947. Like fellow Hamada students Shimaoka Tatsuzo and Murata Gen, Kimua Ichiro has gone on to be a major fixture of Mashiko pottery and was part of a major exhibit of Mashiko potters in the late 90's. His son, Kimura Mitsuru, continues in his father's footsteps.

Illustrated is a form that appears creatively composed of stacked blocks around a central core; this signature vase by Kimura Ichiro changes with each angle and perspective it is viewed. Having a touch of M.C. Escher in its design, this clearly is one of his best and most well known forms along with his more traditional Hamada Shoji style molded bottle and his quirky "football" style henko. The pot is covered in a yellow ash glaze with red high-lighted quadrants with white and copper accented sprigs of floral decoration on both front and back. This vase is a rather purposeful and resolute piece that has volumes to say about Mashiko-yaki and Japanese pottery of the post-war period; function, design and presence.

VISITING MASHIKO

I am firing a bisque today, which somehow got me thinking about an internet friend of mine who is on his way to Japan in a couple of weeks on business in Tokyo. Once that is concluded, he and his wife are going off to Mashiko. Like a moth to a flame, most potters and pottery collectors are inexplicably drawn to Mashiko where Hamada Shoji, Sakuma Totaro, Murata Gen, Shimaoka Tatsuzo and many others have worked, creating pottery based on tenants of the folk craft movement. Like many before me, a visit to Mashiko was part of our treks to Japan back in the early 1990s. Seeing the wellspring of what many westerners were pursuing since the 1960s was rather inspiring and made its way into the work that I would create over the next two decades. I think in reality, it is nearly impossible to go to Mashiko without bringing some of it home with you.

Once back from a Mashiko adventure, I began to focus on creating my own glazes that had that Mashiko feel to them, though I was determined to make pots that were meaningful to me and not intended as copies. In essence, I would add the exposure of the Mashiko aesthetic into the blender and see what came out. Over the years I have gone back to that style to add to the vocabulary of my pots, though influenced by that trip, they are decidedly not Mashiko style pottery. Illustrated is a bamboo form teabowl with a iron red over a clear glaze on stoneware. I stamped cobalt/red iron triangles over the clear, waxed them off and then glazed the bowl in the iron red to create a piece that though it pays homage to Mashiko-yaki, is a thoroughly western pot.

"I am a part of all that I have met."  Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809-1892)