SIDELINES

I find myself sitting on the sidelines as I watch a friend, an advanced collector, decide it is time to sell off his collection. I would be remiss if I didn't mention that the collection is something of a rarity having been cohesively and thoughtfully constructed around the ideals of the revival of the Momoyama aesthetic. Pots by many of the most important and elite potters of the 20th century assembled are now to go the way of the clouds; they form, they come and go, they build like a great storm and then are dispersed by the winds in all directions. I can in no way take any credit for this amazing collection though we had discussed each and every piece, prior to purchase at some length by email and hour after hour of phone time. There is a sadness, a true melancholy; once at home within the companionship of each other, conducting their own complex visual symphony, once gone, each piece will end up as a singular expression of the potter's art. In my time around Japanese art, I have seen a number of good collections built, bought, sold and dispersed, but my feeling regarding this collection is that it was a unique expression of discipline, conviction and an idea that paid homage to a particular aesthetic based on a singular idea as it related to chadogu.

Illustrated is a fiery red Aka-Shino chawan by Suzuki Osamu from the mentioned collection. It is big and bold and the decoration, glaze and form are wonderfully complimentary of each other creating a perfect chawan. This piece has special meaning to me as I was fortunate to handle it at exhibition back in the early 1990's during a stay in Japan. It is large and powerful and just about as good a pot as one can imagine from this potter and the modern Mino tradition.

(Illustration used with the permission of a private collector.)

BASKING

Illustrated is a large porcelain covered jar by NC potter, Tom Turner. The pot has a tremendous volume and has all of the trademark attributes he is known for including the double dipped ash glaze pattern. The pot sits on a shelf about two feet off the ground and when the sun is actually shining in our neck of the woods, it takes full advantage of the addition of nature, basking in the sunlight. The way the light works in the room and on the shelves creates an infinite variety of ways to see the pot and the interplay of sunlight and shadow add both animation and emotion to the piece. It is a great pot and given the environment, it always has something different to say.

"Nothing's beautiful from every point of view."   Quintus Horatius Flaccus (65 - 27 BC)

OUT OF THE PAST

Illustrated is a wonderful Iga mizusashi that definitely looks like it comes right out of the past. Part Momoyama and part modern art, this pot was made by Sugimoto Sadamitsu (b. 1935) and was both carefully crafted and skillfully fired by a master of his art. Made by the coil method, the casual construction is read on the vivid surface as the "seams" of each coil add greatly to the landscape of the piece, the Iga firing then blanketing the pot in a cloak of glass from the melted ash flowing down toward the foot. The pot is finished in a rich ri-iro black lacquers lid with wonderful texture creating a visually delightful conclusion to a classic and even nostalgic mizusashi.

Sugimoto Sadamitsu is a master of not only the Iga tradition but  Raku-yaki as well. Many of his works are infused with a sense of traditional classicism yet through his method of construction, his interpretation of form and his firing methods, his pottery is unique and modern fitting well into the 400 year history of chanoyu and chadogu. Through his intense study of the original Koetsu and Chojiro styles as well as Ko-Iga, Sugimoto's works are chadogu in the truest sense of the word and it is for this specific function the he creates his chawan, mizusashi, hanaire, etc. Like many great chadogu makers before him, it is through use that his works find completion and it is for this reason that his pottery is so highly prized by chajin and collector alike.

FIFTH WHEEL

Illustrated is a simple bowl, wheel thrown and slightly squared made out of stoneware glazed in an iron glaze and the decoration applied in rutile over the surface. It was the extra from a set of four, a fifth wheel, long since having found their way to a new home and this solitary bowl was snagged by my wife and has been part of our mismatched grouping of pots that we use on a daily basis. It may be different than many in the cupboard, but this one is home none the less.

"Home interprets heaven. Home is heaven for beginners." Charles H. Parkhurst (1842-1933)

THE FOURTH

I want to take a moment and hope everyone has a wonderful July 4th. Though distinctly an American holiday, everyone who embraces the principles of living and enjoying liberty, equality and freedom can share in the experience of the nature of such a celebration. For us, today is a great day to reflect and have a semi-typical American dinner of burgers, potato salad and corn on the cob and watch INDEPENDENCE DAY. Happy Fourth of July!

GEM II

A while back I posted a chaire by Oni-Shino pioneer, Tsukigata Nahiko. The previous chaire was a classic Oni-Shino piece with all of the qualities one should think of when thinking about  the style. The illustrated chaire is a bit different, looking a bit like a seated Daruma character from a Zen painting and hardly recognizable as Oni-Shino. The Shino surface is tinged with ash coating the piece creating a beautiful light blue-green surface with the face of the piece painted where fierce scorching and ash built up. One of Tsukigata's true strengths as a potter was understanding his thick, complex surfaces and their effect on form. The choice of form and varying surface and the possibilities was paramount to his work and if you survey his pots, there is an appropriateness that was carefully created, it may also account for why so many pots were destroyed. The very nature of the violent process would create surfaces that did not marry well with their forms and by necessity, they would meet the hammer. This pot is the perfect blend of form and glaze and like the previous chaire, a wonderful miniature universe the fits into a beautiful silk bag.

WHAT'S IN A NAME

My sister-in-law calls these pots, bean pots, but after all, what's in a name? I make these pots to be used and as for what specific task they are employed, I am not particularly married to one use or another. The important thing is that they are used or at the very least, their use is that they add something to the environment in which they are placed. The form is based on stacked rocks which I saw all over Japan over a number of trips and the way in which it is decorated adds a bit more of me to the pot in the lasting impression I have made on the surface. The overglaze of Shige's Black creates a large cell oil spot appearance and the mirco-crystals of the tessha glaze make for a wonderful surface, especially in the sunlight. In the end, I am not at all hung up on names, more concerned with how the pot performs for the new owners.

"What's in a name? That which we call a rose, By any other name would smell as sweet." From ROMEO & JULIET by William Shakespeare

RAINY WEDNESDAY

It is an overcast and rainy day here and a Wednesday to boot; the weather sets the mood and makes tooling pots a chore as I wait incessantly for them to dry. Days like this create a mood for me and it for some reason brought me back to the 90's thinking about working in Cleveland, Japan and about the east coast here in the States. One song in particular stands out and is certainly a great match for the day and quite possibly one of the most memorable songs of the 1990s, BLACK HOLE SUN, the Soundgarden anthem that was all over the radio and in every CD player at every potter workspace I would visit. It is a great song that has a lot to say about the time and continues to echo its sense of melancholia with purpose even today and to my ear, it typifies the decade. I am sure you may ask yourself, what does this have to do with pottery and my typical Wednesday answer would be; both everything and nothing, this is a rambling blog after all.

Black Hole Sun  acoustic version by Chris Cornell

Black Hole Sun covered by  the Vitamin String Quartet

RISK = REWARD

Up for Monday is a rich and lustrous hiki-dashi-guro tokkuri by Gifu-ken Important Prefectural Cultural Property (2003) and Mino specialist, Ando Hidetake (b.1938). This tokkuri has a pleasant and inviting form with slightly diagonal ribs dividing the piece and making the pot seem a bit bigger than it is. The deep black glaze has a wonderful landscape with a profuse amount of curdling to the surface which helps give the piece a rather timeless appearance. The trick to this glaze is that it must be snatched out of the red hot kiln at precisely the right moment, at the height of the glaze's maturity to create such a perfect black pot. Many a piece shatter due to the extreme shock of going from red-hot temperatures down to the ambient temperature outside of the kiln, it is a risky technique. Though a high risk/reward maneuver, a positive outcome is  bolstered using the right clay and glaze and having decades of experience with the process.

Ando Hidetake is truly a master of many Mino traditions which he learned under the tutelage of ceramic giant, Kato Tokuro. Ando creates exceptional works in Oribe, Shino, Ko-Seto, Ki-Seto and hiki-dashi-guro style Seto-Guro. It is nearly impossible to discuss Mino-yaki without discussing the works of Ando in the same sentence as Suzuki Osamu and Hayashi Shotaro. Though his pottery has a more restrained and understated elegance to that of many of his contemporaries, he has obviously traveled along the route which best fits his style and once you have seen his pottery, the unique and personal qualities of his work are readily identifiable.

"I cannot deny making ceramics is like entering a labyrinth. From selecting the clay to finding it is a simple line into which I must find a way of weaving myself." Ando Hidetake

WABI-WAN

Illustrated is a Shigaraki chawan by Minagawa Takashi (b.1930), the bowl was thrown and hand molded. The potter added a vertical texture about the surface before it was fired in an anagama, creating additional runways for the melting ash to fill and presenting a wonderful feeling in hand. Having studied with his father, Minagawa Kiyotaka, also a Shigaraki potter and the illustrious chajin (tea master) and potter Komori Shoan (1901-1989), Takashi inherited a vast amount of technical and aesthetic knowledge which he put to great use in a style that is readily identifiable as his own work. His pieces have an immediate rustic simplicity (wabi) to them and in many ways harkens back to chawan of the Momoyama and early Edo days though there is also something very contemporary about the forms, surface and attitude of the pottery. Though horizontal, the  texture is very reminescent of the ubiquitous bamboo or reed blinds (sudare) seen all over Japan and in art going back to at least the Heian-jidai. His pottery has been exhibited widely in Japan and he is represented in a number of prestigious galleries but probably his greatest accolade is his dedication to a tradition that is as much based on feudal Shigaraki ware as it is the sensibilities of the way of tea (chanoyu) and the chajin.