MOMOYAMA REVIVALIST

“Every pot you make must be your own original creation. It should not be a mere arrangement of old techniques. You see, we are living in this world of today, so therefore we must use the fire of today and sing the song of today. It sounds easy, but it is a very hard thing to do.”

“Shino wares were first created in the Momoyama era, a time of great creative impetus which suddenly vanished. Shino wares created amid the natural beauty of Mino, earned a reputation as the king of ceramics and I would like to bring that tradition back to life. But mine is the modern age, and I would like that fact to come out in my design and plastic art. Above all, I want to mix modern styles with the traditional Japanese sense of beauty as it is presented in the Nezumi-Shino.”* Wakao Toshisada

Illustrated is a Nezumi-Shino chawan by Wakao Toshisada (b. 1933) which clearly shows the revival of the Momoyama aesthetic. Though well known for his creative use of Shino glazes and Rimpa influenced designs, his work as a modern traditional Mino potter is exceptional. His minimalist designs are used to make maximum use of space echoing back to the monochrome ink painters of the Momoyama era. As he very carefully points out and makes use of his own insights, his work is solidly based on an earlier archetype, but his pottery shows the characteristics of a modern day potter.

(*Quoted from MINO; 30 Anniversary DMCAA)

RELUCTANT

I went to Syracuse last Friday to pick up clay and glaze materials to beat the incoming snowstorm and to replenish some inventory depleted during the winter months. While there, the guy getting my stuff asked if I was a “thrower”. I said “Yes, I am a thrower” and then asked about hand building to which I answered; “yeah I hand build as well but I am a reluctant participant”. This got me thinking about when I did start hand building, certainly not at Cleveland State despite the urging of Dick Schneider.

A long while back, I hurt my left hand, specifically my index and middle fingers. I damaged the nerves and ligaments and on top of that, I got a rather bad infection. The doctor was very clear, no throwing for quite a while and depending on the extent of the injury, I may not throw again. This news was certainly not well received and after less than a week without throwing, I started getting very irritable and antsy to work with clay. I started doodling up some ideas for potential hand built pieces and was at it the very next day.

Luckily I had a slab roller for the hump molded plates and trays I make. This made the whole process a bit easier. Working with a purpose and careful not to use my left hand, I set about building teapot after teapot for decorating in various surfaces. By the third week or so, my hand building skills improving, I started making these large house boxes (hauskasten). During this period, I made almost 200 hand built pieces in three temperature ranges and a half dozen surfaces. Though I was dragged into hand building by absolute necessity, a very reluctant partner in the process, I have continued to hand build to this day. I guess it is true; every cloud does have a silver lining.

(Illustrated is a “RunningMan” teapot which measures about 16” x 16” x 2” and a “LandscapeMan” lidded house box which measures about 20” tall. Both are inlaid engobe into my ishime-ji surface. The teapot, which is fully functional, was included in two national juried exhibits of teapots and illustrated in the book; HANDBUILT CERAMICS by Kathy Triplet. The housebox was also in an exhibit; The Tea Party at GBF Gallery in Cleveland, Ohio.)

KAKUREZAKI RYUICHI

There has been much written about Kakurezaki Ryuichi (b. 1950), so I will skip most of the details. He studied with Isezaki Jun, current Juyo Mukei Bunkazai for Bizen-yaki and set off to establish his own kiln in 1985. Many consider this move to have ushered in what is now referred to as Heisei Bizen (the Heisei era started in 1989). Though Kakurezaki’s pottery is decidedly Bizen in tradition, style and firing, his works are unlike any other Bizen potter. His works challenge the concepts of classical and traditional form and it is really not easy to put Kakurezaki’s work within the Bizen tradition.

By looking at this chawan, it would seem that Kakurezaki has an intuitive geometrical formula running through his being. Many of his forms, this chawan included, shows a wonderful sense of proportion and planes and angles that work so well with how he fires his kiln. His works play with visual geometry and challenge the concepts of classical and traditional form. When you combine his constructed vocabulary with his unique approach to firing, it is easy to see why his works can easily be picked out of a crowd.

The illustrated chawan is an excellent example of his intense and successful firing technique together with his broad planes that are accentuated by the running ash. The kodai is cleverly cut to address the issue of geometry and in this case, mimics the form of the bowl. No matter how you look at it, this is a cutting edge and dynamic chawan.

BEFORE & AFTER

In the continued effort to become a multi-media conglomerate under the I,POTTER Ltd umbrella, I shot this short video a couple weeks back while throwing a few teabowls and other smalls for the last firing. In the video, I am throwing a take-gata form teabowl off the hump.


As for the way I throw, I am a natural left hander, despite 12 years of parochial school dis-education. Despite being a left hander, which I use for writing and eating, nearly everything else is done with my right hand from using a hammer to throwing a football. I have Sister Paulette to thank for this quirk. Long before I started to make pots, any potter I had seen was right handed, so when I started throwing, everyone around was also right handed, so the technique I picked up was a mixture of predominantly right handed throwing with some left handed tendencies thrown in. This may explain why I throw the way I do.


The teabowl thrown in the video is also illustrated in its finished state. The bowl was stamped while still wet and then later glazed in my temmoku and tetsu partridge feather glaze.

IRON IN THE FIRE

I fired the BK, my big kiln last week and this is my second firing with my new partridge feather glaze(PF) on some of the pots. As I was waiting on the pots to dry and bisque, I was reminded of comments made by Tsukigata Nahiko about controlling the iron as a means to controlling a glaze surface. This got me thinking and I altered the PF glaze a bit as well as using it just a bit thinner.

Against all sane judgment, I used the new batch of glaze on a group of pots and the results were fairly different than the original PF surface. Though related, the second version shows a remarkable amount of iron variations in the running/streaking as well showing a large number of what appear to be red iron and pyrite specks across the surface. I am wondering if I can control these by trying to slow down the cooling. I guess one thing leads to another………

IPTV; KOIE RYOJI THROWING A SLAB

A while back I posted about a thrown slab technique, I learned from a demo by Koie Ryoji. My plates were a group of 5 Oribe small footed plates that were thrown on the wheel and cut to 5 equal parts. In looking around, I found a video of Koie demonstrating that technique at the V&A in England and thought to share it. It really is a versatile technique and the potential and possibilities are limitless.



(Many thanks to the original poster of this video.)

PROPRIETARY TECHNOLOGY

Since I started making pottery, I have always been curious about how potters feel about sharing their formulas. Some potters share freely and most generously, others a bit begrudgingly so and certainly others not at all. I have always been fairly generous with glaze and clay recipes, though there are always some I hold back. Over the years, I have developed 15 to 20 glazes that I consider my own from start to finish. They didn’t originate from known formulas or are so far removed from the origin, that I consider them originals. These are the formulas I am most “secretive” with, though I have probably shared more than half of these with friends or have traded them away for other interesting glazes.

A few years back there was this novice potter who hounded me on a regular basis to share with her a glaze and firing technique I was using. The glaze was a really pretty candy apple red glaze that I was actually fine tuning and trying to figure out how best to use it. In time, I relented in my very own and peculiar way. I asked her if she would like me to throw the pots, decorate them, bisque and glaze them and then call her to come over and sign them, “Okay” she said. I was dumb-founded.

Not too long ago, I was working in a friend’s studio. I had brought a handful of porcelain teabowls and some stoneware covered jars and a few teapots. Bringing these, I sort of wrote them off as I would be using her glazes, though I brought my best black glaze, BBV3-92, which has a tendency to oilspot over some glazes. Before I started glazing, she told me she was going to fire for an almost entirely red glazes kiln. I figured in for a penny, in for a pound and decided I would glaze in the one of the red glazes and my black glaze. During the middle of the firing, she was called into work and asks if I can finish firing the kiln. “No problem” says I and I proceed to reduce the bejezzus out of the 80cft down draft.

I show up a week or so later and I see my pots on the table and they came out rather nice. I asked her for the “red” formula and she just smirked, went over to her notes, wrote down the formula and then, picking up a large black magic marker, redacted the materials, leaving only the percentages. I asked her if she worked for the CIA and another smirk, I take the formula to the window and there you can see the entire formula, much to her chagrin. In return, she asked for my black glaze formula, again, “No problem”. I mailed it to her the next day, properly redacted; sure she would not be able to read the materials, just the percentages. Later on, way later on, I sent her the formula.

Illustrated is a porcelain teabowl glazed in the Chun Red and my BBV3-93 and a closeup of the same glaze combo on a stoneware teapot.

AN ENSO CHAWAN

Illustrated is a dramatic Hagi chawan with an eccentric enso painted on the front. The vivid Hagi keshiki makes a wonderful ground for the elliptical format enso painted by Buddhist priest Shimizu Kosho (1911-1999). The chawan was made by legendary Hagi potter, Tahara Tobei XII (1925-1991) who has left an exceptional body of work, this certainly being a highlight.

Shimizu Kosho was prolific and diverse artist, known for his wonderful calligraphies and paintings; he also made sculpture in various medium and painted on a large number of pottery, many made by master potters of the day as in this example. Shimizu was for a short while the abbot of the Todai-ji in Nara (1975-1981). This chawan is a typical and masterful collaboration between two artists who have transcended their art and materials. The dark enso against the multi-toned Hagi glaze makes for a lyrical and majestic piece.

RUNNY PROSPECTS

I really like the period of time after I develop a new glaze to work with that fits my visual interests and the forms I am working with. It starts out slow, I test the glaze by itself and with other glazes from pod, to yunomi to teabowl and on to larger pieces. As I get feedback from the firings, I adjust the glaze and decide what works and what doesn’t and keep as many notes as possible together with digital images.

For the partridge feather glaze, since it is fairly refractory on its own, the best combination so far is over the temmoku glaze, though it is interesting over an oatmeal matt, a clear glaze and an amber glaze as well. I have been playing with varying thicknesses of the glaze and am finding that I can alter the length of the feathering depending on how thick the glaze is applied. Recently, I have tried applying the glaze fairly thin over wax resisted patterns and am finding that, that makes for an interesting surface as well.

The illustrated bowl was from my last firing a couple of weeks ago and shows the thinned version of the glaze and the pattern on a teabowl. I have been throwing towards another glaze firing and will hopefully bisque by the middle of next week. The pieces were thrown to try out more pieces in the temmoku and partridge feather combo along with some other glazes. There are several pieces thrown specifically as tests for these glazes and I am looking forward to the result. I always like this period of time, it almost makes you think the possibilities are nearly endless.

IPTV; KOHYAMA & MENTORI

Here is a rather short, but interesting video of Kohyama Yasuhisa faceting (mentori) one of his “wind“ (kaze) objects in his Iori-gama studio near Shigaraki. As you can see, he is rather well versed at doing this, his cuts are intuitive and direct. The outcome is wonderful and creates a great keshiki after they are fired.

(This video is not of the highest quality as it was converted from VHS video to a digital video file by me. It was originally taken in the spring of 1993 while I was working with Kohyama-sensei.)