WOOD & STRAW

I assembled a short video slideshow of a Hagi vase by Yamato Yoshitaka (1944-2010). The vase loosely based on ancient jade ritual vessels known as a "cong" which appeared as early as 3300 BCE; these forms are also seen in bronze, glass and ceramics, most notably in Chinese celadons. Covered in a glaze made of a mixture of wood and straw ash, the milky quality of the surface cloaks the carved, slip covered clay creating a number of color variations that run from milky blue to lavender making for a wonderful keshiki landscape. This pot has a sense of antiquity to it, despite being made in the past 20 years or so but this is one of the alluring aspects of this type of Hagi glaze and the touch of a potter who understands both his medium and its classical tradition.

SPIRAL

I am a big fan of the spiral and use it quite frequently on my pottery. It is one of the oldest known symbols used by man as decoration and to express both expansion and collapse. I have found over time that it helps animate a wide array of forms and I am particularly fond of using it as an all over pattern representing an infinite number of galaxies or possibilities. The illustrated large slip trail plate is covered in spirals of varying sizes and the form is animated by the devices which also drift off the edge of the pot extending the pattern ad infinitum.

"The path isn't a straight line; it's a spiral. You continually come back to things you thought you understood and see deeper truths."  Ritu Ghatourey

TANI-SAN III

Illustrated is a classic, medieval style uzukumaru vase by Tani Seiuemon. Though not very large in scale, it has something that gives it a larger than life appearance. The form is simple and the ash has nestled and run gracefully off the shoulder creating its own unique landscape while the carefully crafted mouth of the pot offers an invitation for use, a labor of love. I have long been a fan of the work of Tani-san and have seen hundreds of his pots over the years, most are striped of the superfluous and each piece seems to be created in a bare-bones style in which he relies on the kiln to finish dressing each pot. There is something elemental and comforting about the workman style pots of the countless potters who make pots simply to be used and enjoyed without ego or accolades and this is also what made many of the great pots of the Momoyama era.

"A man's best friend are his ten fingers."  Robert Collyer (1823-1912)

HAPPY HALLOWEEN

Here is a fun post for Halloween which has nothing to do with pottery and everything to do with childhood memories. I saw this double feature of "horror" movies back in 1967 or 1968 at a Halloween Scream Fest at the Stand Cinema in Plattsburgh, NY along with my best friend Chris. At the time the pairing of Jesse James/ Frankenstein's Daughter and Billy the Kid/ Dracula made perfect sense, since then all I can think is what the heck were they thinking and who in their right mind green-light these films. The times certainly have changed but there is always another really bad horror movie looming on the horizon and someone who will fund it. Enjoy at your own risk.

GELT BOX

It is funny how things start and despite the purpose, the origin of a piece sticks with you. I have always made covered pieces, including small covered boxes and the like all the way back to my CSU days. Just after I left CSU and set up my Hillbrook studio, I was making small covered box forms when a client asked me for something a bit specific. What she wanted was small covered boxes with a pre-determined diameter, that resembled tops (upside down mind you), that were brightly decorated and had the interiors covered in gold gilt. As I was to find out the boxes were to be gifts for Hanukkah and would be filled with Hanukkah gelt chocolate coins. The chocolates are wrapped in gold foil wrappers and resemble gold coins and commonly come in little mesh bags but my customer wanted to put them in something a bit fancier so I set about making a dozen of them for her, several which found their way to Israel and France. I have made them ever since, more specifically as small decorative covered boxes, but the origin of this little pot has never left me and even makes me a bit nostalgic for those days making pots in my basement in good old Cleveland.

FOUR SIGHT

There is a profound simplicity , honesty and beauty to the "ordinary" pottery of the original mingei movement. Pots that stressed utility and function married with common aesthetics that everyday people could connect with. There is a profund The pots of Hamada Shoji, Kawai Kanjiro, Murata Gen, Sakuma Totaro and Ueda Tsuneji (上田恒次) among others were inspired and created to be used and continue on varying folk traditions that seemed to be suffering at the hands of an unbridled output of industry and mass production. The Mingei movement like the Arts & Crafts Movement sought to bring the concept of the hand made back to the forefront as not to be totally over run by factory produced goods. Though the mingei movement has its proponents today, it was the first generation of mingei potters that helped launch a revolution among potters and whose influence is still felt today.

Among the early mingei potters, Ueda Tsuneji (1914-1987) stands out for the practical and elegant works that he produced in shinsha, seihakuji, hakuji and neriage. He apprenticed with Kawai Kanjiro and even studied wheel throwing with Hamada Shoji for a time, but it is under Kawai that he learned the "studio secrets" of the Chinese T'ang techniques of neriage and nerikomi. Though quite adept at a number of styles, Ueda's mastery of neriage stands out as bold and rich pattern integrated within his simple and common forms. Working in a variety of techniques, his neriage created overall patterns as well as designs woven into form. The illustrated mizusashi in four views shows how adeptly Ueda built pattern that worked with and enriched each sides creating four associated but individual views around the pot. Though neriage/nerikomi are common  enough techniques today, Ueda mastered the process through trial and error when few others sought to marry mingei pottery with long forgotten ancient techniques for everyday use and admiration.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

E-SHINO II

I put together another slideshow of a chawan that I had pass through last week. This large and bold chawan in E-Shino style was made by Suzuki Goro and was both a handful and an eyeful as well. Casual in appearance, the bold iron decoration gives one the feeling of directness and spontaneity and above all it is uninhibited; probably the best description of Suzuki's work. About the only thing wrong with this chawan was the fact that it didn't stick around longer for me to study and play with, the large number of pictures I took will have to fill in the void.

OMOTE

Though most likely known for his Persian blue, Sancai and luster pottery, Kato Takuo (1917-2005) was first and foremost a Mino potter. Designated Juyo Mukei Bunkazai in 1995 for his Sansai/Sancai works, Takuo was a product of the Mino tradition and Kobei-gama's diversity before he became interested in Mid-Eastern pottery. Illustrated is a classic Kato Takuo Shino chawan, which along with Seto-Guro, he excelled at. This chawan has a wonderful tapering form and luscious surface which presents a great landscape further accentuated by the rich coloration of the piece. The horizontal ridge and the application of more glaze below it create an engaging face (omote) for this chawan and beckon to the observer, use me. There is a certain sophistication in the simplicity of good chawan and I think this bowl is no exception.

PORCELAIN SLIP AND ORIBE

Illustrated is a teabowl I made a short while back and used in a blog post about pinholing and excessive gas during firing. The bowl came out and it seems like I have most of the gas problem solved. The Oribe glaze is composed of both iron and copper and tends to pinhole now and again as part of its nature so a piece the size of the teabowl may end up with a couple of small and insignificant pinholes and I can live with that. The real point of the test is using the porcelain slurry slip giving the bowl a great tactile effect as well as being quite animated visually high lighting the varying shades and textures of the oribe glaze. I particularly enjoy how the glaze runs down the channels  made by combing the slip pooling around the base and creating a swirling copper blue-green effect adding more depth and variety to the surface. I think this glaze and slip are close to being as fine tuned as possible and there is some sense of reward in this problem solving but I suspect my testing is far from over.

"The reward of a thing well done is to have done it." Ralph Waldo Emerson

PRACTICED DESIGN

If you think of Shino in a broad sense, one naturally thinks of Muji-Shino, Aka-Shino, Nezumi-Shino and E-Shino and the stellar pots and surfaces of modern masters like Arakawa Toyozo, Kato Tokuro, Hayashi Shotaro, Suzuki Osamu, Wakao Toshisada and Hori Ichiro among others. Though there are variations within the glazes used by these and other Mino specialists, the glazes are readily identifiable and have a similarity in surface, appearance and styles. On the other hand there is Oni-Shino which varies radically from the traditional Shino and has such wild variations even within the context of what is that glaze. Though a number of modern potters make what they term Oni-Shino, for simplicity sake, I am only referring to the works of Tsukigata Nahiko. Tsukigata's use of Shino and iron together with ash from the wood firing created a myriad of effects and surfaces that had never been seen before his creation and rarely since his death in 2006, though his son, Tsukigata Akihiko carries on the style and techniques rather well. It is the serendipitous portions of clay, Shino and iron glazes together with a balanced addition of ash that builds spectacular surfaces that are conveniently stirred together with the assistance of the fury of fire in his anagama wood kiln. Each and every pot a canvas and each and every piece radically different but intimately connected in an exciting body of work.

Illustrated is a detail shot of a large Tsukigata Nahiko mizusashi that I recently handled. The contrast between the iron, ash and pure translucent Shino is quite astounding but the real standout variation is the state of the iron which has made glaze runs down the surface of the pot. If you look carefully, you see thousands of iron crystal speckles looking like copper filings in a rich Japanese lacquer as if painted intentionally on the pot. As you turn the pot and catch light from various light sources, the surface appears alive, moving and animated with what happens by inspired and well practiced design or fiery happenstance, though one can't thoroughly dismiss a determined potter's spirit either. I can't exactly say I am surprised at the rich variation in this pot or others by Tsukigata Nahiko, but I can say, I am constantly amazed by them.

"How ridiculous and how strange to be surprised at anything which happens in life." Marcus Aurelius