THREE BOARDS, THREE BOWLS A PIECE

My wife came down and took this quick picture which is admittedly not the most exciting photo of work in progress. The photo shows board number two with two, 2.5lb shallow bowls made, three bowls to a board and eight bowls needed for an order. I am throwing nine bowls in total with the hope that all goes well with four bowls yet to throw at the time of this picture. I received an email last week for a small order of eight of these bowls and finally got around to throwing them today and though this is not exactly a large order, every order counts and ultimately helps fill the kilns. This group is simple as you can see, the form is well practiced and they will all be tooled in the same manner and glazed in iron yellow with the lips or flanges being dipped  twice to encourage running and presenting a different surface than the interior. Nothing all that complicated, simple form, simple throwing, simple tooling and simple glazing but every day that I can throw is honestly a pretty good day and ending up with another bowl for the cupboard is okay as well.

MEMORIAL DAY 2022

As another year passes, with uncertainty looming around the world I am reminded of the debt I and every American owe those who serve and have served, those who have given their lives for our daily freedoms. This is a debt we can not repay other than to honor their service.   

"If you want to thank a soldier, be the kind of American worth fighting for."  Unknown

COMMON GOAL

Though not immediately discernable , what you are looking at is the interior of a Ko-Mino chawan by Ando Hidetake. As I have mentioned previously this is perhaps my favorite style of his work, there is something enigmatic and elemental about this glazing and Ando uses this technique to great effect. This style is further enhanced by the wood firing process and the addition of ash adhering to the surface during the process and making for a wonderland of small and even subtle details. As is easy to see in the picture, the glaze becomes quite liquid at the height of the firing where gravity plays quite the role in the final appearance perhaps only secondary to the potter and the fire. As the kiln begins to cool, the movement becomes locked in its last moment of movement and then the real attributes begin to form as small crystals and a granular texture forms as the overall temperature drops ever so slowly. The exterior where the ash has landed coalesces into a crusty, semi-dry surface that has some of the sought after qualities of aburaage synonymous with Ki-Seto with rich, deep, golden amber glass on the best fired surfaces. As you can see, this is a wonderful and textural experience creating its own unique microcosm when both alchemy, chemistry, fire and experience all join in toward this common goal.

KEEPING COOL

Made out of locally dug Echizen clay and wood fired, this guinomi exhibits a gem like quality that is of course further enhanced by the rich bidoro drop on the front (?) of this piece. Born into a rather well known pottery family, Yamada Hiroshi is the son of Yamada Kazu and grew up in and around clay, a family where clay permeates the pores and makes its way into the fertile Echizen pottery tradition of the region. This guinomi belongs to a fellow collector in Europe who has an eye for tokkuri and guinomi and this particular piece sits perfectly among the rest of his collection. Like with many of the guinomi that I gravitate toward, this Yamada Hiroshi piece has that "mini-chawan" appearance with a simple yet fluid form, excellent surface and interior and is perched perhaps a bit precariously on a wonderful foot that creates lift to the overall ambiance. I thought the light and casual nature of this Echizen guinomi was perfect as spring moves toward the heat of summer where the contents and quiet aesthetics can contribute to keeping one cool despite its origins in such intense heat.

DRAW TWICE, SLIP ONCE

This illustration shows how I end up making or rather designing a number of the more "complex" slip trailed designs that I use over black slip. Since the technique is essentially a one attempt kind of process I have felt that it is good to get a good idea of the design and then lay it out in thin ink over the black slip before letting the white slip loose on the canvas. This particular design is a rather old one dating back to Cleveland where I was asked to make two large 20"+ platters that would hang for a real estate office. As you can see this plate is covered in a variety of layers of houses that were meant to depict Cleveland Heights and University Heights at the time, I wonder where they are now? I guess it just doesn't hurt to have a plan before you just go ahead and ruin a 20" plate, remember to draw twice and slip once.

SIMPLICITÉ

In the field of pottery, there are lots of potters who specialize in a particular tradition or style, others in a single glaze or a few more and then there are potters who have focused their attention on the glaze materials of which glazes made out of various wood ash is one possibility. One such potter is Kimura Morinobu, the youngest of the three Kimura brothers, Morikazu, Moriyasu and Morinobu who lives and works on the outskirts of Kyoto and collects and burns a wide array of woods (and bushes) to create one of the principle ingredients for his glazes. By burning the materials himself, Morinobu is able to control the unadulterated properties of the ash and work to formulas developed over the coarse of a lifetime of pottery and glaze making. In the end his work is made up of ash and clay and little else except perhaps a bit of water and a fair amount of fire.     

Illustrated is one such piece where the surface originated from locally sourced and prepared wood ash in the form of a thick, luxurious seihakuji glaze coving a simple, functional koro balanced on a stable tripod base. The lid has three simple cut outs in the form of teardrops while the body of the koro is decorated with slight distortions of the surface creating three abstracted plump, ripe persimmons and where the surface is depressed the glaze has filled in creating a rather pleasant visual texture.    

Over the years I have seen quite a few pots by Kimura Morinobu including in both Osaka and Kyoto and what has always appealed to me about his work is the simplicity and practicality of the pieces. Though rather attractive and noble in bearing, his pottery has a inviting appeal where the intended purpose of the piece, the appearance and the attention to use go hand in hand, In turn  this makes them at home with the aesthetic and function that most craft are admired for and sought after in Kyoto be they a simple koro or an article for chanoyu and just about everything else in between.

DNA

Though perhaps best known for his rare and unique yuteki-temmoku chawan, Hayashi Kyousuke is fairly versatile for a specialist. Beyond the yuteki-temmoku, Hayashi makes wonderful work in a modern take on Kuro-Oribe as well as Ki-Seto pottery, a technique learned from his master, Kato Kozo by way of Arakawa Toyozo. The illustrated Ki-seto chawan is about as traditional a chawan in form and surface as they come though the lattice of copper applied to the chawan and now blushing through the surface is very modern and purely Hayashi Kyousuke in creation. This chawan has a welcoming atmosphere, comforting and elegant in its simplicity while the texture of the glaze surface is soft and velvety adding to the calm and contemplative encounter. The chawan is finished off with a kodai that is highly complimentary to the bowl form with just a hint more texture where the crispness of the cut foot is tempered by the glaze itself. Though classic and simple, this Ki-Seto chawan shows not only restraint and a thoughtful use of materials but in its DNA are centuries of the past fused permentantly within a bowl that is perfect for tea in the 21st century.

LOOK MA, I'M ON TV

A while back I posted up a picture of one of my shallow bowls being used as a prop from a national TV show which I have to admit was kind of fun. A couple of weeks ago we were flipping around the channels to finds our local news and immediately recognized another piece of pottery that I had made some while back hanging in the foreground of the interview. In this case the show is a political show on Spectrum News in which State Assemblyperson Pam Hunter (@pamelahunter128) was being interviewed and my tebori, hand carved wall bowl was over her right shoulder on the wall. Considering Assemblyperson Hunter's district is around Syracuse, NY, I am assuming the bowl was purchased at Eureka Gallery before it closed or at Mixed Methods somewhat more recently. I realize this is no big deal really but it was kind of nice to see the piece prominently displayed in her work or home office. Now if only I can figure out how to sneak a pot in to the living quarters of the International Space Station, I am pretty sure I would get some bragging rights with that accomplishment.

THAT IS A BOWL

Large, bold Aka-Shino chawan by Yamada Kazu and for full disclosure the photo is just a bit over-exposed and I do not have access to it to rephotograph the piece but despite that fact it is still quite easy to say, now that is a bowl. I think what is immediately apparent is the fiery appeal of the chawan with a wonderful multi-toned surface, nice texture, great form and lip and the seductive taper from the base to the lip. As if these attributes weren't enough the dramatic punctuations from the fingermarks created while dipping the bowl in glaze also act as the starting point for the glaze runs, contrary to gravity up the chawan while the bowl was pulled from the bucket upside down. The wonderful surface creates a practiced landscape that like a good painting tells the story of at least part of the creation of this chawan while leaving the remainder up to the viewers fertile imagination. Despite the character and characteristics of the bowl, at its core this is a simple chawan that was constructed of complex details that are a very clear indication that the potter who made this bowl has made many more of this form and style. For Yamada to arrive at this point his experience like some organic clock works from piece to piece and firing to firing creating a long and sometimes winding pathway of pots along the way.

TURNAROUND

I am not exactly sure where I first saw this type of closed pedestal dish form though I do know it was some Italian majolica and possibly at the Gardiner Museum (in Toronto) though I am not sure. After seeing this piece in the early 1990s I started making these forms in majolica and also in stoneware using temmoku and tessha glazes and in porcelain using a Choy and a Kawai celadon and though not the epitome of storage practicality, they are fun to make and to use.  

The piece illustrated is a prototype for a customer who wants eight of these forms for a dinner party in which they will serve either tempura, shrimp cocktails or sushi as the menu is not set in stone quite yet. The piece was thrown yesterday and tooled and assembled this morning as the initial prototype being about 8" x 4" at the moment, the top of the form is heavily paddled for a nice texture and the sides are impressed with series of four small squares around the piece and in keeping with the overall idea the piece is finished in a pedestal style foot with a single pierced hole to allow air to escape during the bisque and glaze firing.   

The current thought is that these pieces will be glazed in Oribe with the top having a good coating of iron sprayed over to create a mostly black surface but allowing the texture to still be quite visible. I used the lemons to quickly illustrate the size and scale of the piece which can be tweaked to meet the needs of the customer as well as to give a clearer idea of how much this space can hold. All in all this was a rather quick turnaround for a prototype and hopefully if all goes well I can get the platform pieces made, assembled, dried, bisque and glazed in time for their inaugural use.