OUT OF THE FIRE

I always enjoy handling a "new" pot by Mino potter, Mizuno Takuzo, his work is built for function, practicality and for just the right amount of intriguing allure plucked right out of the fire. Having arrived here just today this robust Seto-Guro chawan is no different with a form thrown to capture the movement of the wheel, the slightly curdled surface offers just the right amount of texture to please both hand and eye while the interior is mostly smooth black to make it quite easy on the tea whisk. There are a few semi-dry areas to the glaze as to be expected but the majority has a nice wetness to the surface with a distinct teapool and bare clay exposed where a foot was tooled to complicate the overall piece. This pot was fired to red hot temperatures and then with long-handled tongs it was pulled, hikidashi style from the kiln and after a few moments plunged in to water to lock in the color and texture of the surface. Though Mizuno Takuzo was accomplished at a variety of styles, he was named Intangible Cultural Property of Toki for his exacting dedication to his Seto-Guro technique. If you look carefully you can see the remnants of the tong marks in the very center of the photograph which just adds to the black landscape of this chawan.

OLD WAYS

Emerging from the shadows and coated in a nice layer of ash and glass, this Shigaraki chaire reminds me of those antique feudal pieces that you can see in museums, especially in and around Shigaraki. There is as with many of these pieces, a timeless quality, a sense of antiquity where pots had strong, practical and purposeful forms and on a good day a rather well fired surface. This chaire was made by Tani Seiuemon who had for years studied and collected old pots and was dedicated to making Shigaraki-yaki in the "old ways" right down to building an anagama based on old Muromachi period designs. 

Using local Shigaraki clay and woods favored for such uncomplicated surfaces, there are many of the characteristics of the earlier archetypes in Tani's pottery from the way the clay is handled, to posture and the various marks and spatula work. I think it may be safe to say Tani Seiuemon's  works don't have the bold charisma of Tsuji Seimei or the flare and playfulness of Suzuki Goro but when it comes down to simplicity, honesty and practicality his pots are first on my list for use and for adding a magical and solitary sense of antiquity to a shelf in an otherwise modern environment.

STEP 2

Illustrated is step 2 in moving forward on the Hagi style white with my saffron iron glaze over and so far so good. As I previously mentioned this started as a "no expectations" glaze test and I am rather pleased with the results thus far. From this recent glaze firing I pulled out two teabowls and a covered jar and to my eye, the other teabowl is even better than this one (more to follow). The base glaze for this iron glaze is one that I have fine tuned and works with a wide array of alterations and colorants though the ilmenite and rutile additions kind of crashed and burned. Though the glaze was put on as a rather even coat around the surface, parts of the bowl show a deep saffron color and almost obscure the clay texture underneath while the remainder of the pot shows saffron streaking and running making for a rather intriguing and animated surface. As I have said, with no real expectations and not enough experience with the glaze combinations yet, the results have been fine by me and now I am looking at what are the possibilities for its use among different forms and different clay bodies. The bottom line is that more testing is needed and the expectation threshold is raising with each and every firing.

EXPECT THE UNEXPECTED

The box reads simply; MINO-ORIBE HANAIRE but the surface certainly says, this is a bit different then what you should expect but then again, that may sum up the pottery of Tsukamoto Haruhiko to a T. Tsukamoto Haruhiko (b.1959) has been making pots for over three decades originally training with Nosaka Shunsei and Asai Reiji, traditional Mino potters before becoming an independent potter and setting up his own studio in 1985. Since that time Tsukamoto has become quite well known and is exhibited and published throughout Japan having won several prizes along the way. As you can see he has blended elements of tradition with the ideas of modern vessel making that he sees in his mind's eye creating work in which it is always best to expect the unexpected.      

This whimsical Mino-Oribe vase was thrown with a fair amount of texture and throwing marks to the form and then carefully manipulated out of round and to slightly curve the pot from base to mouth with casual but distinct lugs finishing off the piece. There are incised marks on the front and back of the pot that almost mimic the incised signature on the base and these marks draw the eye from side to side and accentuate the slight curve of the form. This vase was glazed in Oribe with an ash glaze over before firing resulting in a vase that shows motion both horizontally and vertically and a rather playful sense of animation skillfully built in to the form. To complete the piece, the landscape presents a rather unexpected color palette for Mino-Oribe or any other Mino pot for that matter also creating a distinct front and back to ponder. I think it is clear that when encountering the work of Tsukamoto Haruhiko that the unexpected is in fact exactly what to expect which adds a new dimension to the modern Mino tradition.  

FACETED BLUE

I was quite aware of Phil Rogers and his work before I ever met him, I had several of his books and seen a number of his pots at various places with their rich  ash glazed or salt fired surfaces. I was fortunate to have met Phil in 2003(?) at  a Wesleyan Potters workshop and found that we had quite a lot in common regarding what potters and pots interested us so we kept in touch by email over the years. Beyond a few email exchanges it was clear that Phil was interested in collecting Hamada and Shimaoka pots which I stumbled on to from time to time and he was very keen on trading his pots for theirs when I would find something. By trading I was able to acquire a few very fine pots by Phil including a really large salt fired jug and a faceted cobalt bottle among other thing. After his trip to South Korea we lost touch as he was busy with a new family and working toward some wood firings but I enjoyed our trading and emails over the years quite a bit.     

Illustrated is a rather well salt fired cobalt bottle faceted across for planes that shows a rather diverse topography of depth of color and texture. Beyond the color and texture the neck and mouth are perfect and ringed by a wet ring of slat that varies in color and the foot is crisply and expertly cut and flanked by his personal mark and the mark of his pottery. Having some personal insight into a potter leads to a deeper connection with the pot and at times helps answers regarding the how and why certain details are the way they are and to be perfectly honest it really doesn't hurt knowing that both Phil and I were looking at exactly the same pots which make their way in to our pots even if it doesn't look like it.

FIVE BY FIVE

Illustrated is a greenware tebori XOXO covered jar that was one of five made at one sitting and dealt with the next day, morning for trimming, constructing and slipping and late afternoon for carving. Unlike a lot of other potters where I see dozens of the same thing I tend to stick to a dozen or less of a single pot to keep things interesting for me. This covered jar was thrown out of terra cotta, about 3 lbs of clay with matching lid, tooled, had a "broken branch" style knob affixed to the lid, black slipped and then carved later that afternoon with this simple XOXO patterned. Honestly the most difficult and time consuming part of this covered jar and getting the knob just right and getting it securely attached to the lid at the right time so that once fired there are no fine line cracks. Other than the trimming, slipping and carving, throwing five jars and five lids is quite an enjoyable way to spend some time while listening to in this case to one of my 80s remixes CDs.

MORE IS ALWAYS BETTER

 This morning I happened to spot a rather familiar looking Iga henko form on Instagram and that made me go back and look through my archive of photos on the hard drive to come up with this particular photo. As I mentioned, the two pieces could in fact be from the same series made within hours or days of each other and both fired in the same kiln but that being posited the truth is that I have now seen five of these forms by Iga potter, Imura Mitsuo who learned a great dealer from his teacher, Sugimoto Sadamitsu an influence that is easy to see in how the clay is handled and the pots are fired. As for the five similar henko, two were in catalogues/ magazines, one was shared by a friend over the internet, two of the pieces were seen in hand and lastly there was the one this morning on Instagram. Now if the math doesn't add up in your book that is because this piece is also one of the two illustrated in a catalogue, just wanted to get that out in the open.   

This Iga henko is a perfect size, it is about 14" or so long and was made with a wonderful taper moving toward the sides emanating out from the well considered and crumbly style texture to the mouth. Perhaps one rather interesting feature to this piece as with most that I have seen it that it was fired on their sides allowing for the ash built up during the firing to cascade down the surface making for a rather dramatic and effective look on the pot. The surface of the piece is a wonderful narrative of the possibilities of firing from a bit of hiiro fire color to green glass like ash, long, determined ash flow and areas of carburized surface where charcoal built up around the base of the pot as it was fired telling its story of creation. All in all, the form of this henko by Imura Mitsuo works very well with the manner in which it was fired with its varied surfaces, well enough I should say that there are a number of these pots floating around out there and if one is good, more is always better.

A SMALL GLIMPSE OF DAI-KANNYU

Up next at I,Potter TV, well on Youtube to be fair is this splendid Yamato Yasuo Dai-Kannyu (kairagi)  Hagi guinomi. I made this short video slideshow using what details I thought best captured the essence of this diminutive but impactful guinomi giving a small glimpse of dai-kannyu in the round. The dai-kannyu, big cracks are certainly front and center on this piece and rather hard to miss  with a surfacethat looks very different under varying light sources. There is a real beauty to the soft multi-layered appearance of the Hagi glaze that is almost brutally interrupted by the deep, tactile fissures that define Yamato Yasuo's dai-kannyu pottery of which this is just a very small example but illustrative of the effect and process that he has embarked upon. Enjoy the video. 

FLOODED

Illustrated is before and after views of a yunomi showing off a floral design that I first used all the way back in Cleveland. On the left is obviously the yunomi just out of the bisque showing a blossom on one side of the piece while on the left is the fully glazed pot with the blossom from the other side. I admit the surface looks a bit odd as I flooded the yunomi with light to best showcase the design under the darkish AO+ glaze which under normal light you can see the design but I just couldn't get a picture capture the image with resorting to this method. As you can see the yunomi is a rather simple affair as is the black slip design but once glaze fired the whole thing changes by softening the blossom and creating dimension to the surface. Admittedly there isn't that much complication to this yunomi, one extra of a set of eight made and honestly I wouldn't have it any other way. We are off to test this one in real world situations as my wife has decided we needed one more mismatched pot in the cupboard.

OGAWA MISHIMA

If you happen to like Korean influenced mishima inlay than this mizusashi is certainly for you, a tour de force of decoration created by a master who has dedicated his life to working with primarily white slips, Ogawa Tetsuo. This solid mizusashi is decorated in two large bands of impressed and inlaid decoration with smaller horizontal decoration breaking up the surface a bit and creating a strong and traditional appearance that would be at home in any tea room. After the pot was thrown, the overall decoration was impressed in to the surface where a layer of white slip was then applied and "forced" into the depressed areas and allowed to dry before it was then scraped off likely using a sharp kanna or metal rib. The slip, like a kohiki slip shows wonderful areas of color and blushing through the transparent top glaze that makes for a rather variegated surface that would be impossible to tire of. Though this Buncheong style originated in Korea, Ogawa Tetsuo has managed to grapple with the technique and mastered it along the way and adding to the mishima and kohiki traditions creating pots that converses in his very own voice.