CENSER

This is an old photo, recently transferred from a 35mm slide to a digital image and was the very first picture I took on my first trip to Shigaraki. The photo was taken in front of the shop of Tani Seiuemon and is of a large, articulated and reticulated censer, koro flanked by two large dragons and a wild shishi atop the lid. The koro rests on three study legs and has a wonderful floral style decoration created by cutting through the outer wall of this double wall vessel and the surface is coated in just the right blend of hiiro and ash making for a rather feudal looking pot, several hundred years older than it actually was. Tani-san was gracious and allowed us to take photos and handle quite a few pots while serving us tea and sweets but this pot was neither for sale or to be handled and in truth, I am not sure I can blame him. We parted this trip with a small uzukumaru tsubo and a gift of a meoto yunomi set and some pictures to help jog my memory all these years later.

MORE PROTOTYPES

Illustrated is a pair of cups and saucers that were made as prototypes for a customer wanting to get a gift for an engineer. After some back and forth and explaining that the final design had to adhere to some principles of gravity and physics, this is what we arrived at. The cups were designed to be rather formal and straight  with a slight curve inward at the top, a tooled foot that is finished with a series of concentric circles and a thumb rest that also has an industrial look to them. The black ink line around the forms was simply used to make sure the handles were placed at exactly the same spot as the expectation was some degree (?) of conformity and unity. The saucers have a depressed area where the cups rest surrounded by concentric channels matching the underside of the cups with the edges finished with a gear like appearance.   

The prototype was accepted and I made a set of eight and only eight cups and saucers that were glazed in a dark green-black matt glaze that I have used in the past for flower pots and serving bowls. I was asked not to use any photos of the finished project but since these are simply greenware I thought this was a least a peek into another small commission and odd project that has come my way. A bit more demanding to make than most pieces due to the +/- exacting dimensions, these were still fun to make as I had never made anything quite like this before and after more than a few years of making pots, odd can sometimes make for a very intriguing day working in the studio.

RENZAN

Hayashi Shotaro started his education and career by studying with his brother Kyosuke who was a rather traditional Mino potter with the tiniest flair of modernism baked in to his pottery. Unlike his brother, Shotaro began to show an inclination to walk along a different pathway that had distinct elements of tradition infused with modern and sculptural elements distinguishing his work and himself from the large crowd of Mino potters. By pushing boundaries and definitions of archetypical norms, Shotaro began to create forms and ultimately surfaces that challenged the established criterion of the Mino traditions and creating at times objects that were carefully balanced vessels with both the essential elements of the function of the forms with a sense of sculptural, non-traditional renderings of everything from chawan and mizusashi to vase forms and tsubo. As the years passed, his pottery, his forms became more bold, more challenging and certainly more idiosyncratic leaving behind the more conservative pathways of what  one would point to as traditional yet adding to the tradition that has become more inclusive as potters test the boundaries and preconceived notions of what Mino means.    

Illustrated is such a pot, a simple, for Hayashi Shotaro, E-Shino mizusashi made to be a functional vessel but with a unique, brutalist and sculptural appearance that looks exactly like the natural, cataclysmic forces that create mountain ranges which is exactly what this piece is meant to recreate in ceramic. Exhibited and illustrated in a Daiwa show and catalogue in 1993, Hayashi Shotaro calls these forms Renzan-mizusashi or mountain range mizusashi and from the craggy, almost geological forms to the mimicked horizon lines painted in thick iron under the pure white glaze it is very much like looking past the peaks of one range, perhaps the Japanese Alps to the next succeeding one and its narration in form and surface and looking well beyond the traditional pot meant to hold water. I think it would be hard to convey the presence and real aesthetic impact of this Renzan-mizusashi with a single photo or a video slideshow but at some point this is my intent. For now I hope this picture gives some perspective of this provocative mizusashi that if nothing else makes it clear where Hayashi Shotaro stands in the field of modern Mino pottery, perhaps very close to the pinnacle.

IN THE ROTATION

I caught this Iga duo as the last of the sunlight washed across the shelves where there are objects on permanent display though the majority of them are transient. There are a several reasons that the display changes quite often, some of the pots are here for a brief time moving from one home to another, some are new to us pots and others are old favorites brought out of storage to be enjoyed on a whim or because it is just their time in the rotation. Rotating pots makes a modest collection seem that much larger where after months or sometimes a year a pot is brought out of its hibernation and its conversation renewed, almost like they are brand new pots.         

Such is the nature of these two Iga pots, tokkuri and guinomi, related in function, clay, firing and potter, made by Furutani Kazuya a decade ago or so. Making for a nice pair, the sunlight highlights the features and form through its all encompassing light and deep shadow and lets you see well into the glassy surface of each where the way the bones of each was built from little more than earth, water and experience. Like most pots, these will disappear, back into storage, not on to a new home and when they do it will be like another renewal of old acquaintances when they come out again perhaps about this time next year.

DAN ANDERSON (1945-2023)

Back when I was a pottery nomad of sorts, I had two encounters with Dan Anderson, both slideshow lectures and both thoughtful, inspiring and honestly fun, there seemed to be nothing boring about him. It is my second encounter that I remember most, my wife and I ended up in a car with Dan Anderson, John Gil and Kirk Mangus and though this sounds like a set up for a joke, it was a wonderful hour or so in which as a "newbie" to ceramics I learned quite a bit about wood firing and the making thought process. Despite my wife being there as a non-ceramics person, all three graciously answered her questions and I think preferred her conversation and inquiries to mine. At the time Dan was giving a lecture regarding his towers, water tanks, etc. and was beyond illuminating and humorous, it was a time worth remembering. Though very brief, hearing about his passing has been a bit sobering and reflective and I am sure anyone that has met him over his long career was touched by the encounter as another legend has left us but lives on in his teaching and body of work as well as his thoughtful collection of art and pottery all punctuating a lifetime in clay.   

I decided to use this picture which I am sure I have used this teabowl before as it is one of the only pieces of wood fired pottery that I have left that I made in the early 90s. I believe this was made about when the above encounter happened and since I have very few actual photos of that time period, this will have to act as a stand in since I have no personal pictures of Dan Anderson or his pottery and didn't just want to grab something off the internet.

A CLEAR PICTURE

Illustrated is a wonderful little Iga tokkuri by Hasu Yoshitaka with a dark, ash encrusted surface and lots of activity that a European collector sent me pictures of recently. I am a big fan of the prominent shell scars on the face of the pot where it was fired laying down which also resulted in the ominous drop of ash lingering and defying the laws of nature but adding to the tension of the piece. Perhaps as a page borrowed from his master, Banura Shiro, Hasu has carved undulating furrows around the tokkuri creating a very nice sense of movement and also adding quite a bit to the textural experience and allowing some addition ash and glaze to build up. This is one of those pots that at first glance appears to be a rather spontaneous creation but as I look at the piece in a number of photos sent it is rather clear that the potter had a good idea, a clear picture of the finished presentation and a bit of experience with the process and if you want proof just look at the simple posture and defiant pose of the lip and you will have all that you need.

QUARTER SPEED

I used this tokkuri back in 2018 as my Happy New Years post and a Youtube video slideshow and decided after all this time to pull it out and make a short slo-motion video of the pot to help fill in the gaps using a better camera and crisper image. Made by Kojima Kenji this Iga tokkuri is a perfect size and is as pleasing in its function as it is with the aesthetics of the piece. As is quite readily apparent, this tokkuri was fired on its belly and the ash has melted and run to the center turning gravity on its head a bit while standing upright and the real bonus is the wonderful bidoro drip stuck on the lip looking like some promethean jeweler has embedded an emerald into the moth of the pot. I hope the video gives a fuller sense of the size volume and dimension of the Iga tokkuri and that the quarter speed of the video gives ample time to see the landscape as it truly is in person.

BEST LAID PLANS

This abstrakt resist covered jar was an extra piece, the largest of a set of matching pieces as a commission and because I am paranoid, I made an second of the biggest one to make sure I would have all five pieces for a holiday commission. As luck would have it, both large jars made it out in great shape but the smallest jar, about 8" tall spiral cracked around the lid knob rendering it useless, something that I certainly didn't plan on and rarely see happen. As I inspected the crack it was clear that somehow a piece of organic material was inside the clay creating an air pocket (which may have been a piece of string?), something I also haven't seen in a rather long time. I had to go ahead and make another small covered jar and got the group of five packed and shipped out and I am left with this 13"+ piece as a bonus. The firing that this jar was in seemed to be a bit hotter than normal which leads to the really dark black surface and the bright colors showing as the spiral/slash repeat design. I am glad both of the bigger jars made it out safe and sound and I have thrown two extra lids to try to fit to the small jar knowing the original dimensions; time, a bisque, a glaze firing and time will tell how that works out.

P&T

I have put up posts on my blog previously about the potter Yamada Seiji and when ever I think of his work, two things spring to mind; proportions and texture. Though I am sure this is a generalization as every potter has good days and bad, with many of the encounter of Yamada's work the proportions of the respective pot are quite spot on, whether it be the bowl size or shape in relation to the kodai or a vase like this Shino mallet where the body and neck work quite well together where the body tapers inward as it rises to be topped off by a neck that does just the opposite and the height of each works well to compliment the overall aesthetics of the pot. 

Beyond the form and proportions of this mallet, the use of a single glaze in varying thickness has created a pleasant landscape, abstractly painted with color and texture to help narrate the structure. Using skill and intuition accumulated over decades, Yamada builds his pots based on purpose while acting as a canvas for the beauty of Shino which he has written about over the years and has concluded that Shino deserves the right degree of respect, can not be forced and should be used in just the right way. Though that expression was paraphrased, what is clear is that with his pottery in general and Shino specifically, Yamada Seiji understands that Shino is the most Japanese of all glazes and should only be used with insight and respect which is clearly baked in to the clay and glaze that he has married together through fire and a bit of personal creativity.

NEXT

Since being introduced to the Karatsu pottery of Nakatsuka Takaya by Robert Yellin many years ago I have been on a constant look out for his pottery as I find it to be simple, honest and humble in its execution and appearance. Though I have had a number of encounters, overwhelmingly the chance meetings have been disproportionately chaire for some reason of another where out of perhaps twenty or so piece that I have handled, at least a dozen of them are of the diminutive form and scale. 

This particular chaire was my last serendipitous encounter just a little over a year ago and the initial impression was like I was looking at some well kept Edo specimen showing a rather simple and classic form with a surface created by using several glazes and the anticipated addenda from the wood firing process itself where fly ash has further enhanced the wardrobe of this chaire. Despite the propensity to run into chaire what I can say is the wide variety and range in form, surface and style the pieces have been from Ao-Karatsu to Madara Garatsu  and a few in between, all processing the look of antique pots from a tradition and time out of the past. Truth be told, I don't think I would complain if the next pot that I happen to see is a tea caddy as look as it is as interesting and conversant as this simple Karatsu chaire .