C&C2

I handled a rather nice Seto-Guro recently that had a lot going for it; a nice surface, nice clay, nice form and very practical to use and hold but I kept thinking, it is just missing something. In the conversation with the chawan I couldn't help but be drawn back to a chawan a handled a few years back, a Seto-Guro chawan by Arakawa Toyozo where surface, form, kodai and presence all elevated the piece to a different level. The Arakawa as one might expect was potted excellently, the clay itself is just great but there is something about the bowl, the casual nature and honestly of the form, it appears to have been created without any contrived elements, in other words, from a lump of clay sprung the framework of a chawan. It is easy to say that the bowl embodies a no-fuss, no-muss attitude by Arakawa toiled on from his youth to his later years striving to create pottery that combined a certain naiveté with a practiced sense of subtle dynamics. I think as you look at what may a rather simple Seto-Guro chawan  it doesn't take a huge leap of the imagination to envision all the effort of a lifetime of dedication poured in to a single piece,  day by day, pot by pot.

I decided to put up this static photo of the Arakawa Toyozo chawan because admittedly the video of this piece I put up years ago isn't my best effort. I hope it gives more of a sense of the chawan than the video does. I should also mention the Seto-Guro chawan I was just handling is in fact a very nice bowl but there is a reason Arakawa is one of the greats.

"Where there is much light, the shadow is deep." Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

FACETS FINITO

I just fired off the kiln and among the pots was the faceted tokkuri that I had up on my blog a while back. The finished piece came out pretty nice with a variegated surface created by the latest incarnation of an Oribe glaze I am working with but the highlights are around the shoulder and other horizontal cuts where the glaze collected. These particular areas have created deep, dark green pools of glass that in some respects, segment the form and establish areas that the eye darts to and with the changing angles and planes, the light plays off each surface differently. These tokkuri were enjoyable to make and made a good platform for a glaze that has quite a degree of potential with effects and textures that just keep adding to the lexicon of its possibilities.

"Green is the prime color of the world, and that from which its loveliness arises."  Pedro Calderon de la Barca

A KNOCK ON THE DOOR

While working in the studio this morning loading a bisque there was a knock at the door, the Post person arrived with a box, pots had arrived. I knew these two pots were coming through an exchange of emails last week and the ever useful tracking info, I had planned accordingly so that I could photograph the pieces and get them up on Trocadero today.  The first pot is a Honami Koetsu utsushi of his famous Raku bowl, KAMIYA made by Sasaki Shoraku that is a neat piece to handle with an electric surface of gloss and depth. the second piece is a tsubo by Kato Kenji best known for his Persian blue pots but who is equally as well known for his vivid overglaze enamel platters and tsubo. The brushwork on the pot is just alive and fluid, just what one would hope for from this potter.

If you would like to see more pictures of these two pieces, please have a look over at my Trocadero marketplace;
https://www.trocadero.com/stores/albedo3studio/catalog/

GLACIAL GLAZING

Quite a while back I posted up a photo of an unpacked wood box with Khan trying his best to create some degree of mischief around the piece but as I had mentioned, the Kumano Kuroemon mizusashi was safe and sound on a high shelf. In the middle of searching out a particular group of photos I ran across this detail shot of the Kuma-Shino mizusashi in question and thought I would post this up, though a slideshow video will likely be put up at some point. I love this particular detail shot as it showcases a beautiful landscape of ash coated Shino as only Kumano could create through his intense and wonderfully orchestrated firings. The surface is luminescent looking like age old glacial ice with a crust of running ash at the center of the shot. There is something ancient about these surfaces as if they have been around for centuries, a presence that appears more like it evolved or coalesced rather than having been created by a lone potter with little more than some clay, wood and a fiery determination.  

D&D

Since all the way back while working at Cleveland State, I have used various incarnations of a dot and dash design and in this case in black and white slip trailing. In a legal folder somewhere, I have a small scrap piece of paper which is about 2" by 3" with this design sketched out and near the top corner are the letters, R-O-M. In all honestly I can not for the life of me remember where I saw this design but my suspicion is that it was on some ancient or old pot at the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto.  I realize that when I tore the little scrap of paper it could be coincidence that it says ROM on it but I am comfortable enough with saying that this must be the genesis for the design I now use. I really like slip trailing this design as it works well around most round forms and it is nice to set up a group of pots and just go on auto-pilot until the slip trail bottle runs dry and is in need of refilling. 

M.Q. THE VIDEO

After I made my post on Weds. I went back to the file of the Kato Hajime photos and was inspired to put together the slideshow video of the chawan much sooner than I had anticipated. I selected a group of photos that I hope captures how the bowl looks in person but also what it says, its presence. This is a hardy, fairly large chawan that captures a distinct moment in time that really has a lot to say, a conversation regarding the work of a potter, a tradition, a visual narrative of a time and place and last but not least about what it means to be a chawan. I have most probably said to much already but just want to call attention to the finger prints of Kato surrounding the kodai, forever frozen in a moment and adding to the memory of one of the giants of the 20th century. Enjoy the slideshow.

"Perfection is not attainable, but if we chase perfection we can catch excellence."  Vince Lombardi

M.Q.

Though Kato Hajime (1900-1968) was a Ningen Kokuho for his brilliant Iro-e work, there was very little in the way of both traditional and non-traditional ceramics that he didn't attempt and master. Kato turned his hand to a wide array of pottery making which included works in Karatsu, Bizen, Shino, Oribe, Shigaraki, Kohiki, Kinsai, Seiji/ Seihakuji, Jun and on and on, and in each style his genius shown through. Illustrated is what appears to be a simple Shino chawan but having handled it I can attest it is much more than that, the bowl is alive, it has a rhythm and posture that animates the bowl while keeping it firmly within the functional realm of chanoyu. The surface creates a wandering landscape narrative that forces the eye to dart here and there to drink in the entirety of form and the varieties in color has a wonderful blend of the subtle and vivid, with further study in hand, it is clear this is no ordinary chawan, dare I say museum quality? As you can see this Shino chawan was illustrated in  a catalogue (1974) for a museum show showcasing the works of Kato Hajime which traveled through Japan and of the 166 pieces, this chawan was the only Shino piece exhibited. Though I truly believe the use of museum quality is well over used, in just some cases, perhaps this one among very few, the description might just fit the pot, at any rate, it was a very pleasing bowl to handle and study. The vivid feldspar landscape that circles the bowl will be very hard to forget despite that fact I took a lot of pictures of this chawan and will put together a slideshow video at some point in the future.

SPECIFIC PURPOSE

Out of a recent firing, I put together a number of small pairs of whiskey cups thrown to help fill empty spaces around the kiln. Though I call them whisky cups, their uses are endless considering over the years we have used them for dips, nuts, condiments, sorbet/ ice cream, whiskey of course as well as sake, bourbon, and teas. The illustrated pair fit well together in terms of decoration and color and look nice in front of a full bottle of a Suntory Hibiki Whiskey and I must admit, I like the look of whiskey against the dark Oribe style glazed interior. As I mentioned the uses are as endless as one can come up with but when I sit at the wheel to throw my mind usually goes to a rather specific purpose for the pieces I am throwing and in this case I think you can guess what that function is.

"Too much of anything is bad, but too much whiskey is barely enough."  Mark Twain

THE OLD IS NEW

I just relish a pot that has that old, medieval look to it; a casual stance, a rich, well fired surface and a classical form. This Bizen chawan has the feudal appearance with a surface that just reminds one of old Bizen and the form is well crafted and inspired by those old bowls of the Momoyama and early Edo days. Made by Osawa Tsuneo (b. 1962) this bowl is a practical exercise in looking back at old Kamakura and Muromachi era Bizen pottery and blending it with the moment, a skill he learned from his master Sueishi Taisetsu and through hard won trial and error to both replicate an older style firing method and classical pottery from an earlier time. I assembled this slideshow video from a chawan that I had here at some point in the past and think it gives the sense of the carefree, yet disciplined nature of a chawan than straddles two distinct ages.

KYOTO-SUGATA

One of the things I love about the various Kawai school potters is their unique sense of form especially when it comes to the molded henko they are so well known for. Innovative, provocative and elegant forms, many related to the Kyoto sense of style are a wonderful  stage for the variety of glazes and decorations that sprung from Kawai Kanjiro and were passed on within the family and to many of his students from deep, dark temmoku, rich shinsha reds and the world famous gosu blues. The illustrated henko was made by Kawai Hisashi and has a direct relationship to those of his master with his own unique sensibility thrown in and perhaps a small dose of the elegance that the old Imperial Capital, Kyoto is known for. The full form begins and ends with the same style of angular termination that ties the form together and is glazed over in a whitish, translucent crackle which is highlighted with areas of red that has run and created areas of droozy, moss like tendrils that bring movement to the surface of this engaging piece. This pot is definitely a classic henko that draws its inspirations from earlier days and Kanjiro as an expression of the potters inner voice adding another page to the Kyoto saga of the Kawai-mon.