SOMETSUKE

Kondo Yuzo (1902-1985) was arguably one of the greatest sometsuke potters of the 20^th century and for his dedication to his art, he was made Juyo Mukei Bunkazai in 1985. I have always been captivated by the elegance and simplicity of most of his work and the stark white background plays perfect host for his bold and quick sometsuke blue brushwork.

Illustrated is a prepatory sketch for one on Kondo Yuzo’s small blue and white hachi plates and though the accompanying plate is less involved in design, you can easily see the fact that through his repeated painting of the persimmon, time and time again they appear nearly identical. Like Hamada Shoji who brushed his iconic “sugar cane” motif thousands of times, Kondo Yuzo has achieved the same repetitious spontaneity, characteristic among many of the great potters of 20^th century Japan.

UNDERSTATEMENT

“The art of tea Way consists simply of boiling water, preparing tea and drinking it.” Sen (No) Rikyu (1522-1591)

It may sound rather niave, but I have long been fascinated with Rikyu’s assessment of the tea ceremony. Not since Julius Ceaser’s commentary, “Vini, Vidi, Vici” has a statement been so simple and to the point though in the case of Rikyu, the actual accomplishment of tea is anything but simplicity. With all of the formality, aesthetics and the grace and posture involved in chanoyu, the art is the absolute definition of the “complexity of simplicity”. In the end, like a great chawan, the art is to make it look simple and uncontrived. It is this simple “Way” as Rikyu puts it,that can take a lifetime.

IPTV; TEABOWLS IN CAMBRIDGE

I am not sure how many of you may have seen this video produced by the Ceramics Program at Harvard of a recent demonstation of four potters making teabowls. The video highlights Suzuki Goro, Tsujimura Shiro, Richard Milgrim and Jeff Shapiro as they throw, tool and talk teabowls. It is certainly worth a watch!

ON THE VERGE

I really like to throw teabowls occasionally that push the boundries of my abilities and the laws of physics. I have long admired the altered and casual chawan by such notable greats as Tsujimura Shiro, Suzuki Goro and Kakurezaki Ryuichi to name just a few. Interestingly enough, if you look closely at their works, you can see a pattern emerge. Through their apprenticeship and later while working, they have developed a formulaic approach to creating chawan. This formula allows them the freedom to create a series of bowls in a naturalistic manner with subtle nuances that differentiate between the pieces. On closer examination, there is an evolving form and idea that has sprung from a similar idea. This is both taught and learned over years of working, it is the “potters’ evolution”.

For the most part, in the West it is all about trial and error. Since the bulk of my work is very functional and Western in its approach, it has taken longer to develop repeatable formulas for the altered teabowl. The illustrated bowl was basically beaten into submission, beaten to the verge of collapse. This bowl was thrown off the hump, giving me lots of room to maneuver around the form with my paddle. Once heavily paddled, the bowl was rethrown from the interior and and gentlely cupped from the base and pushed oval. Once leatherhard, the foot was addressed with a sharpened bamboo hera and the the excess clay all cut away leaving an oval foot. After the bisque, it was glazed in my temmoku and haiyu glaze giving it a Karatsu feel in appereance. It doesn’t show now, but there was a moment, when this piece was on the verge of collapse and being wedged for yet another try.

ON THE ROAD

My wife and I got on the road last Friday to go up and see Bill & Anna Klock. Admittedly, it had been way to long since I had been up, especially given its close proximity. When we got there, it was like stepping back in time to our last time wood firing together. The property, house and studio conjure up memories from those beginning days of making pottery. In an odd way, you can go home again.


Bill took me into the studio; we talked about pots, potters, glazing and materials. The materials were one of the reasons we went up. Bill is down-sizing his material reserves, keeping the essentials for the pottery he is currently making. We rummaged through the chemicals and I was able to pack 600 pounds or so in our car. There was the redart, G-200, Albany slip, Barnanrd slip, Michigan slip, Frits 3124 and 3110, rutile, ochre, nephaline synite, ultrox, wood ash and others. Though the materials were the premise for us to go up, honestly, it was just great to be up there and see Bill.

Anna put on a wonderful lunch, catering to my peculiar eating habits which ended in a great piece of her homemade orange cake and a typical cup of tea. Everything at Bill’s revolves around a good cup of tea, a habit transplanted from his days at the Leach pottery and his subsequent trips to England and St. Ives. In recent years, Bill was invited by the new owners of the Leach pottery to help stabilize and sort out the kilns and buildings.

After lunch, we toured Bill’s wood working studio, his other passion. Bill has large stockpiles of lumber from his property including wonderful slabs of oak and butternut. He is currently working on a modern set of chest of drawers that has an Arts & Crafts, Stickley feel to it. The house shows off other pieces he has made including a computer table, a writing desk, chairs and various cabinetry. Obviously, just something else to keep Bill busy.

It is obvious now, that I need to get up to Bill’s more often. It was an enjoyable day trip and refreshing to interact with the person I hold responsible for getting me into pottery and helping keep my work on track. Once the car was fully packed, we exchanged pots. I gave Bill a small covered jar in my medieval green glaze in rozome style and in return I got a small vase with brushed slip, broad powerful foot and opaque ash celadon. As a parting gift, I could not be any happier!

CURATORS

In a recent email exchange with a friend, he was extolling the pathos of “actual ownership” of objects which we commune with. “We are only temporary caretakers of our collections through history. With contemporary Japanese ceramics we may be the first or early in the list of curators of the pieces we ‘own’, but eventually they pass along like blowing clouds. It is a bit sad is some regards, but on the other hand is a form of immortality in an offhand way if we prove to be good caretakers. I can't help to think of the long line of "owners" of the great Momoyama pots we are lucky enough to be able to view today because over so many years individuals held a piece of baked ceramic in high enough regard to protect it for prosperity. (HW)” Over the years I have thought about our conservatorship, curatorial duties and responsibilities we have for these objects. We are entrusted to care for and restore these pots (and other objects) and pass them on in the condition we found them or better off than they arrived.

A short thought, years ago I was exceptionally fortunate to handle a very famous Momoyama period Shino mizusashi at the CMA. As I felt through the walls and lip, I could feel where the potter had attached coils to coil and throw the piece. I can feel the rhythm of the clay in its walls and how he added more clay to make the gallery for the lid. Through my senses, it was like I was transported back to see the potter create the pot. As I continued to handle the pot, I thought of the history that swirled around it, the owners, users, tea ceremonies that it was part of with famous and possibly infamous users. It is the proverbial, if only it could talk, the tales it could tell.

This mizusashi has outlasted countless owners, curators. The care and responsibility for this pot, and countless other objects, rest in the hands of the owner of the now; tomorrow, it will be introduced to someone new and begin a whole new dialogue and visual narrative. How it is that countless generations have seen fit to preserve and safeguard this pot is a testament to its presence, bearing and honesty despite the ever present reality that no single individual can “own” anything. In time even the pharaoh’s have given up their great collections and no one can totally possess an object, we are all just curators.

(Thanks H!)

DAIKOKU-SHISHI

I have previously mentioned that Tsukigata Nahiko was a prolific and wide ranging artist as well as being known for his patented Oni-Shino. Illustrated is one of his fun and animated bronzes made in a larger edition. This 6” tall bronze is of a jocular shishi (lion guardian) figure imitating Daikoku, god of earth, rice and wealth, identified with his mallet and sack of rice. The sculpture was seemingly quickly and boldly rendered and then cast in bronze and given a brilliant gold gilt finish. This bronze, like so much of his work is notable for the amount of sheer energy and enthusiasm captured in a static object. From pottery, painting, calligraphy and sculpture, Tsukigata Nahiko made excellent use of each medium.

IPTV; TOOL-TIME

For your Friday viewing pleasure, a short video of me tooling a small terra cotta v-bowl. I also have a short video of the same bowl being slipped and carved and will post that another time along with the finished, glazed piece.

WHAT'S NEXT

Illustrated is a teabowl from a recent firing in my temmoku and tetsu-yu glazes. I have been trying to figure out what else can be done with the iron glaze, besides just dipping and here is one of my recent attempts. The bowl has been finger racked around the body creating intervals of thinner glaze, hence the vertical pattern. Now I realize it is still dipped, but it does have me thinking, what’s next?

KOWARI TETSUYA

A little over two years ago, I was surfing around the internet looking at pictures of Japanese pots. I stumbled on a website that specialized in shuki; guinomi and tokkuri. On this site was a group of eight guinomi, unlike any I had seen before. They were glazed in wet and luscious Oribe green and were all frenetic in appearance. Most were mentori style with abrupt planes of angles, the others spontaneous and loosely thrown, all begged to be picked up, handled and used. The potter responsible for these pots is Kowari Tetsuya(小割哲也). As I searched around the web, I found more of his highly articulated and animated works; guinomi, yunomi, hachi, chawan, mizusashi, even lamps and sculpture. I was hooked by the diversity and variety of his work and specifically the way in which he handled clay. Sometimes when I am looking at Kowari-san’s works, especially his Oribe pieces, Jazz springs to mind. The forms and surfaces have that flowing improvisations I think of from good Jazz, along with a sense of syncopation in the way surfaces and forms run from smooth to rough and from curve to angles. This work has a rich visual vocabulary and an endless dialogue with the viewer.


Kowari-san (b.1970) graduated from Meiji University in 1992 with a degree in architecture from the engineering department and finished his graduate work two years later in 1994. In 1997 he started ceramics with his father, Kowari Yoshitsugu, who is a self-taught and basically set about teaching himself pottery without any formal apprenticeship. Within three years, he had his first major exhibition of his works in 2000 with exhibits at the Osaka branch Takashimiya and at the Shizuoka Prefectural Fine Arts Museum.Since that time, Kowari-san has had a number of exhibitions and shows and has also been published in several books including Kuroda Kazuya’s (of Kuroda Toen Gallery) publication on Heisei Era potters.

His studio and kiln, MUSHIN-GAMA are in the southern shadow of Fuji-yama at Fujinomiya, Shizuoka Prefecture. There he built his studio and both a gas kiln and an anagama 5 meters in length. He fires his kiln twice a year. The kiln takes approximately five days to fire and another five days to cool. Unfortunately, Kowari-san’s kiln was damaged in the recent earthquake, but he is in the process of repairing the damage. He also fires his gas kiln more frequently for various pottery including his Oribe style pottery. He uses a variety clays from Shigaraki, Iga and Mino and from these, he makes his Anagama-Shino, Shigaraki, yakishime ware, kohiki and Oribe ware. As mentioned before, Kowari-san makes a lot of sake related pieces; tokkuri and guinomi as well as a broad range of table wares, tea ceremony pieces, vases, tsubo, lamps and sculptural works.

Being self-taught, Kowari-san’s approach to clay is both based in tradition but free of the normal constraints of a specific tradition. He studies “Momoyama to make modern Shino and Oribe” as well as looking to potters who ushered in the revival of the Mino traditions. “Arakawa Toyozo and Kato Tokuro are grand, I love and respect them very much.” He understands their contribution to the revival of the modern Momoyama aesthetic and uses these archetypes as a springboard for his modern interpretations of this ideal. He also is very conscious of the West in terms of pottery. He is fond of Voulkos as a western potter for his pushing clay boundries and regards Bernard Leach highly for his impact on the West as well as the East.

Illustrated are three chadogu (tea ceremony piece) by Kowari Tetsuya. The first piece is a tall and highly animated Oribe mizusashi. The piece is made from a rough clay and has accents of iron running through the rich Oribe glaze and the form is further accented with spontaneously attached lugs just below the mouth of the pot. The whole pot seems to have just happened and is both fresh and modern with that hint of the Momyama aesthetic.

The second illustration is of an Anagama-Shino chawan. The broad form with lazily roving lip, make me immediately think of the works of Kato Tokuro and earlier Momoyama chawan. The chawan has been glazed in an iron glaze and Shino and has been further activated by a generous coat of natural ash glaze running down the face and interior of the chawan. Like most of his work, the kodai, foot is quickly and unhesitantly addressed. It is modern in its approach yet is very much in harmony with the overall bowl. The shape is strong and the surface is rich making for a very contemplative keshiki (landscape).

The last illustration is an Oribe mentori chawan. The rough clay of this chawan has been heavily faceted, creating a chawan which is right at home in the hands. The faceting create a wonderful posture and the bowl appears to be moving forward despite resting securely on the kodai which is again, in harmony with how the chawan was made. The chawan was glazed in Kowari-san’s Oribe glaze and was fired on its side using clam shells as props to hold the bowl off the kiln shelf. The glaze ran around the pot to culminate in Oribe bidoro drip just at the center of the piece and the clam shell impression have formed wonderful pate de verre style accents created from glaze and calcium residue of the clam shells. The way the pot was fired is written on its face and makes for a great narrative of modern pottery. Though this chawan draws from various archetypes, it is a thoroughly modern bowl created using the Momoyama ideal and Kowari-san’s own creativity. It is a great addition to the Oribe tradition.

After searching around the web, I was able to not only find galleries who carried Kowari-san’s work, but I also found his website;
http://www.mushingama.com/index.htm
I emailed Kowari-san and found out that he could write very good English, which is a good thing. Even though I can read kanji, my written Japanese is very poor. He graciously sent me pictures and agreed to answer some of my questions for this short post. As both collector and potter, he must have sensed my enthusiasm for his work and Kowari-san has been very open about his pottery and how he works. Should you decide to email him, please tell him, Craig Bird sent you!

(Pictures used with the permission of the potter and a private collector.)