FREE WHEELIN'

There was a time, a long, long while ago where when I was decorating bowls and plates that I would just throw all caution to the wind, free wheelin' and making up designs with the pot in hand, as you can imagine this was accompanied by a fair amount of crash and burn pottery. Slowly but surely I worked out designs on paper, with pencil mind you and then using ink on the pot surface. This particular carved porcelain "grasses" bowl shows the ink quite well along with a design that I just couldn't make work, especially after having carved over a dozen other pieces that day. The inked decoration was to be  based on an oak leaf design that I have used before though in a set pattern and layout, this attempt was entirely unscripted, not well planned out and 110% free hand. In the end I just couldn't make it work and fell back on the "grasses" decoration which just works so well around round bowls and plates. Maybe for the next go around, I'll spend a few minutes with paper & pencil and see how to make the decoration work before I just decide to just jump in head first.

Just a song I like by Mary Fahl, BEN AINDI HABIBI;

TOKKURI

Illustrated is a rather nice Bizen tokkuri that certainly wears the effects of a rather good firing across its entire surface. I first saw and handled this tokkuri back in 2016 and was immediately impressed with the form and surface though the scale that it presented was also rather notable, did I forget to mention that it is over 13" tall? Coupled with the large size, the box itself is another point of interest, it is made of plywood though the top of the lid is signed as one would expect, I will admit that I have not seen such construction before. I suspect this tokkuri and the box date to the early to mid 1960s at the latest and as you can see, the work is a rather mature and expertly crafted and fired pot that just happens to be housed in an odd box and hold enough sake for a good sized party. I am not usually opposed to oddities, though I do prefer a good mystery now and again and I will share more info and perhaps a video slideshow at some point in the future of this rather eloquent pot.

"The things that stand out are often the oddities."  Pierre Salinger

ORIGIN; JAPAN

Illustrated is the inside view of a Madara-Karatsu chawan that shows off the buttery softness of the glaze which is randomly punctuated, like a night's sky with iron erupting out of the surface and creating streaks thanks to gravity. This chawan was made by scholar and potter Koyama Fujio during the 1960s and was a gift to then Director of the Freer Gallery, John Alexander Pope. Besides this Koyama chawan, Pope collected a number of pots, some gifts, some purchases which included Kawai Kanjiro, Hamada Shoji, Koyama Fujio and an upcoming star at the time, Okabe Mineo of which many of his pieces were then collected by a fellow curator at the Freer and a friend of Pope's, after his death in 1982, Martin Amt. This chawan was collected from Mr. Amt in the early 2000s along with several other pieces and though such provenance is somewhat rare as one usually just ends up with a pot, "origin; Japan" it is interesting to note the hands this chawan traveled through from its "making and baking" to the present day.

MAKING THE CUT

I have to be honest, cutting feet by hand is a real struggle for me. What I should say is that instead of putting the pot on the wheel and "trimming" it as the wheel spins with conventional tools which is what I am used to, this foot was cut with a loop of bamboo "bark" and a splinter of broken wood from out of our wood pile for the wood stove. This approach is anything but conventional especially given my background studying with various Leach trained potters and a definitive Western perspective but I still try my best to match bowl to foot and in this case the foot was carved out with the same tool that quickly faceted the bowl itself.  As you can see in the photo, I let the clay set up to just the right consistency so that each cut would leave a sharp impression and would show even after the bowl was glazed and fired. I have to admit that this certainly takes me out of my comfort zone and not every foot makes the cut so to speak but I guess in another couple of thousand I might at least feel more comfortable in the process.

"I don't like to be out of my comfort zone which is about half an inch wide."  Larry David

FRESH FRUIT

Quite a while back I posted up a picture of this Ishii Takahiro Oribe chaire that I likened to a freshly picked fruit, right off the branch and mostly wet as if with morning dew. In looking through various folders I found the pictures of the chaire and decided to build this short and sweet video slideshow of the piece that hopefully shows off in the best light. Like most of his earlier works there is a wonderful enthusiasm in his pots and this chaire is certainly no exception along with an added dash of playful exuberance.

"A playful mind is inquisitive, and learning is fun." Bill Watterson

LEGACY

In the recent post, BASHO MIKOMI I used a picture of the inside of a Furutani Kazuya Iga chawan that made its way here somewhat recently. As a result of the post, I received an email asking about the chawan and at the very least could I post an overall picture of the piece which is a rather simple, feudal and rustic bowl. Illustrated is the very first picture I took of the chawan using only natural light and luckily a ton of fine details just popped out from the totally covered ash surface and varying coloration to melting feldspar punctuating the bowl, bursting like stars shining across the surface. There are brilliant, emerald like areas of deep, rich bidoro tucked away in nooks and crannies like around the foot exterior which just add to the throwing marks and inviting form and slightly meandering lip. All of these details add depth and substance to this chawan which maintains its elemental posture under the weight of its feudal pedigree and dependence on tradition and the eloquent tutelage of one of the 20th centuries finest Shigaraki/ Iga potters, Furutani Michio. It may be somewhat presumptuous but it is easy to make the case that seeing this chawan, Furutani Kazuya  both maintains and expands on a long standing tradition while adding to the Furutani legacy.

INSTAGRAM

Though I doubt it will matter in the scheme of things the way the world is going at the moment, but I decided that if Instagram is good for over one billion people, what the heck, maybe I should give it a test run. Like my blog which has just sort of evolved and has stayed true to the disclaimer regarding its rambling nature, I suspect that Instagram will just sort of happen and reflect perhaps a broader sense of things that I see, hear and watch. In the course of an average day, I do end up taking pictures that I rarely know what to do with, some have to do with all the wildlife that makes its way through or resides on our property, while other are pottery pictures and quite a few detail photos of all kinds of things here and about. Like the blog where I ramble on about whatever comes to mind, this venture is more about dragging myself into the moment and doing so mostly in a photo or video and a simple caption. I am not sure where to go with this platform but thought it worth giving it a try and of social media in general I am reminded of a famous TS Elliot quote; "Distracted from distraction by distraction" and since I am easily distracted, I hope I can do my best to do just that.

Up from the depths is a combination of two of my favorite things; Shino and Godzilla. What's not to enjoy? 

https://www.instagram.com/albedo3studio/

FINISHING TOUCHES

Having a peculiar interest in mallet vases, I thought this photo was worth sharing. This illustration of Furutani Michio putting the finishing touches of what is likely to be an Iga mallet vase originally came from a pottery magazine from 1999 which shows him making a variety of different pots as well as a group of finished, fired pieces. As you can see in the photo, this pot was made by the coil and throw method and the proportions show a solid, purposeful intent created to not only stand up to the ferocity of the firing process but to function as intended without fail. The surface has been left with just the simplest of marks created during the making process with only the minimal amount of added detail to imbue a bit of animation to the form. I have seen an handled quite a few mallet vases by Furutani Michio and it is quite clear that despite their height or width there are "fixed" proportions that guide his hand in each and every case, locked away through years of experience and study that in the wet clay, just happen.

CROSSED PATHS

As luck would have it, for about a week these two tokkuri crossed paths, both coming and later going their own way but they were enjoyable to handle and study during their stay. I had them both on the corner of a shelf though not as close to the edge originally as in the photo and I noticed this wonderful shadow that was present and decided to take this particular shot of the two tokkuri just hanging out but casting a rather moody and impressive shadow, like siblings, even twins. In the background there is the Kojima Kenji Iga piece and in the foreground is the Echizen-Shigaraki tokkuri by Miyoshi Kentaro but as is immediately clear, they cast a nearly identical shadow made just a bit more atmospheric through the black and white imagery. On a side note, though we live in very different times, look at the B&W photographs of photographers like Ansel Adams, there is an absolute clarity to the imagery in an uncluttered, unfettered and pure way that color can get in the way of and as I look at pots sans color I sometimes think, there is the essence of the pot stripped to its bones, pure fired clay. 

"To think of shadows is a serious thing." Victor Hugo

MORE, MORE, MORE

Every now and again I find myself motivated to make up a new clay body for some specific aim I have in mind. I occasionally will use a formula but honestly prefer to just wing it based on having used quite a few different clays over the years and having some sense of what the constituent parts play in strength, plasticity and durability. In this case, test body #1, my goal was a porcelain(80)/ stoneware(20) mix so I went ahead and figured out possible materials and made up 10lbs of dry weight clay which yielded somewhere north of 13lbs of usable clay, having mixed it to a slurry consistency and then drying it out on bats and finished by wedging the dickens out of it. My first step was to make a series of test pods which I fired to make sure the clay didn't melt, slump or bloat and worked well with a variety of glazes and then I set about throwing some test cups like the one you see here.

The clay throws quite well though it would benefit from sitting around for a while but I went ahead and threw three teabowls, a vase, a koro and lid and two other test cups out of the mix. All in all I am happy with the clay body and think it deserves a larger run but making up more means more materials, more time, more energy, more effort , more space and perhaps I can stick to mixing it up 10lbs at a time which is quite frankly just a hell of a lot less "more" than I signed up for.