SPILLWAYS

Here is a quite detail shot of a recent impasto slip style teabowl glazed up in Oribe, iron and a quiet sheen of black glaze. The diagonal channels make for excellent spillways on each plain of this squared up bowl adding a nice sense of movement to the piece as well as a great deal of visual and dimensional texture. I have to admit, I like not knowing exactly what the results will be using this three glaze combo with the latest Oribe as the base to work from; various shades of green, amber, brown and black droozy areas crop up along with these ashy looking trails with trails of various colors within them as well. Now I do realize this is in no way rocket science but I like the alchemy feel to the process where the amounts and combinations change as much with a puff of breath* as they do with anything else. (* I am using an atomizer as a spray gun to apply the two or three overglazes.)

HAGOROMO GUINOMI

I have had this short video slideshow on the hard drive for some time and thought it was as good a day as any to put it up on Youtube and my blog. This yuteki style, partridge feather guinomi was made by veteran iron glaze specialist Kimura Morikazu and shows off just one of the myriad of styles and surfaces that he mastered along his long career which started out in Kyoto before he moved off to Echizen. This nice yuteki-temmoku guinomi has a nice array of features and effects that creates a rich tapestry to enjoy and bringing to mind the hagoromo, the feathered cloak. I hope this slideshow as short as it is helps fill in the blanks of the form, surface and subtleties of this guinomi by Kimura Morikazu and is the next best thing to having in hand.

TRANSPACIFIC VOYAGE

Given the current state of affairs and the dramatic increase in getting pots from Japan to the US I had decided early on to try my hand at getting a pot or pots shipped by surface, seamail, a practice I have been using for printed materials for quite some time. Illustrated is the very first attempt at doing so which arrived after what seemed like an eternity but in absolutely great shape from pot, wood box and even the other cardboard box. Granted this was packed rather well but I gave the odds for at about 25% which was oddly enough how this pot was picked as a $10 plus $26 Japan Post seamail bill and when it arrived I was quite pleased all things considered.

This haikaburi Shigaraki uzukumaru tsubo which is just a little over 9" tall was made by Shimizu Hiroyuki and shows off a pleasing enough form with a rather nice firing with a rather active surface which give the pot that spark that catches the eye. During the firing the pot apparently fused to a shelf and when removed a small area came off the pot which was then filled and decorated in gold which adds a rather old, medieval feel to the pot. I really enjoy the directional ash caused by the velocity (and ferocity) of the firing which triggers the imagination to think of Ando Hiroshige's "Sudden Shower" woodblock print. Perhaps another intriguing feature of this pot is that the signed box also has a painted image (see inset) of the vase in use which adds a certain amount of appeal to the package. All in all this was an excellent test subject for the ardors of Transpacific voyage and low cost method of shipping for pieces that it would seem can not only make the journey but are worth the wait.

NOTHING TO SEE HERE

A recent email exchange came at precisely the right moment a short while back with two extra (?) squared teabowls sitting ready to be tooled and addressed one way or another. The conversation moved me to decorate the bowls both with segmented planes in which the stoneware had the kanji MU incised through to the clay and the porcelain one would have red overglaze enamel painted after the piece was glaze fired. This particular video slideshow follows the inspiration and progression of the stoneware bowl from thrown and incised, black slip segments applied, clear glazed and the finished piece. As you can see, there is "nothing (MU) to see here" across the segments around the teabowl alternating with the dark black areas and at the end of the day, this was enjoyable to document and make. Thanks for nothing! 

OSC

The box of this chawan clearly and succinctly reads; ONI-SHINO CHAWAN and though not totally alien to this potter, this style is a bit less well known than his various Shino, Oribe and haiyu glazed pots. The potter is Hayashi Shotaro and what normally springs to mind is the thickly glazed Shino pots of various incarnations from pure white, crimson reds to blue based feldspar surface and let's not forget the soft and evocative pastels of his rich Manyosai haiyu glazes. This Oni-Shino chawan shows vivid areas of semi-translucent crackle Shino with rich areas of iron effervescing through to the surface creating a scene out of some icy world envisioned only in our minds all layered and painted on to a canvas that has seductive curves and a posture defined with strength and functional determination.

Though in no way an anomaly I think I am attracted to this chawan and surface because there is a uniqueness to it, it fits well within Hayashi Shotaro's body of work while being obviously different than the bulk of his Shino chawan like one of those teachable moments for days gone by where "one of these things is not like the other". I will admit, I am drawn to the eccentric, the outsiders, those that walk a distinctly different path and it is easy to see where this Oni-Shino chawan is certainly not like the others.

GDD

I remember when Ishii Takahiro first burst on the scene having spent his apprenticeship with Kakurezaki Ryuichi, Ishii's palette was diverse but for me this Oribe, this vivid glaze caught my eye. As you can see in the picture there is a clarity and boldness to Ishii Takahiro's work, the Oribe glaze itself is bold and unapologetic as it interacts with the texture and color of the bare clay that has these wonderful orange flashed boundaries between clay and glaze. There is also a boldness to the form, just outside of the norm but well within the concept of the pot and its function for tea ceremony and beyond. The pot is accentuated by the expanded foot and lip where the creative, asymmetrical lid sits inadvertently decorated by wad scars and the crisp geometry of the knob and lugs all which showcase thick blue-green glaze or the gravity defying drip (gdd) atop the spire of the piece. I think that though it would be easy to say this is a simple pot with modern overtures the truth is that the decisions made and there are many to produce such a pot are quite a bit more complex than meets the eye though should we expect anything less from someone who lived, studied, learned and worked alongside one of Bizen's great modern masters? I just don't think so.

DOUBLE TAKE

Quite a while back I made a video of a Oribe kushime style teabowl that I had made and posted it up on Youtube. This was not a video slideshow but rather a video of the teabowl in motion on a rather cheap turntable and as I looked at it this weekend I was rather crushed at how poorly it actually captured the real nature of the bowl. In the video the bowl doesn't really want to stay in crisp focus for the majority of the duration and the color, texture and surface are washed out and not terribly interesting. I am not sure when I turned away from making this type of video but I could see where this presentation would be the nail in the coffin.

This past weekend as I was cleaning up and putting things away I actually realized that I still had this teabowl, loosely, very loosely based on a Momoyama piece I had handled, sitting up on a dusty shelf and decided to rephotograph the piece in a way that would bring out the character and characteristics of the piece. In this photo the use of Oribe and Iron show up quite nicely with a wide array of color and texture accentuated by the kushime combing and areas where the infused glazes are using the channels as diagonal speedways adding movement to the teabowl. I know it would seem that I already covered this bowl in its video debut but I thought since it was just hanging about that it deserved a double take, a shot at putting its best foot forward and hopefully this time I have succeeded in that task.

NIHONGA-YAKI

I am a huge fan of modern Japanese painting, the Nihongo masters like Higashiyama Kai and Hirayama Ikuo rate high on my list as I am sure they do for most lovers of the idiom. That being said, perhaps it is easy to see why I find this cover box so intriguing, the Nihongo inspiration is rather unmistakable, it is like looking through a densely packed forest of bamboo with the wonderful added benefit of function. This vivid and meticulously decorated hexagonal futamono covered box was made and painted by Oda Aya (?) and clearly shows a mastery of both clay and painting together with a keen sense of space to create this evocative and naturalistic piece. I love how the coppery background comes through all of the detailed stalks of bamboo creating such a sense of movement that if you concentrate you can almost hear the sound of the rustling of leaves in the distance. As I said, I really love Nihonga painting and could it get any better than to be so incredibly rendered on a three dimensional ceramic form? The obvious response, I just don't think so.

LINE DRAWING

This short video slideshow is another one of the older videos I built quite a while back using my first digital camera and what by comparison is now considered stone age software. Unfortunately I can re-photograph this chawan and these pictures will have to do to give the best insight in to this early Kojima Kenji Iga chawan. What is immediately apparent is that this chawan was well fired and despite the nice coating of ash on the face the incised archaic style line drawing pops right out. I have seen this style of archaic inspired decoration on a number of Kojima's pieces including a few large henko and tsubo that creates movement and visual curiosity to the surface. I apologize for the less than stellar quality of the video slideshow but still think it conveys a broader sense of this Iga chawan than a single static photo would. Enjoy.

NEXT

I am not sure if I had used this photo or one of the overall before but I was puttering around the studio and the light was just right and I was reminded of the neat glaze effects that occurred on the surface of this shallow wall bowl. Made perhaps at the beginning of last year in a series, I had hung this bowl up on the wall as an extra to an order and it has been there ever since. As you can see the area of temmoku is riddled with what would almost pass for oil spotting effect that is flanked with a tortoise style appearance across the rest of the piece. As you probably guess this is not a planned outcome but in some cases where the temmoku glaze goes on a bit thick it creates this texture when the medieval green is placed over it. As I mentioned this morning the sun caught this piece just right and I was immediately reminded; why is it I haven't made any of these pieces in a while?