LIGHTLY SALTED

"The source of my work is found in the role that pots perform within the household." Michael Simon from the book; EVOLUTION

Illustrated is a small and animated covered box by Michael Simon. This pot was wood fired and lightly salted, accentuating  the form and the spiraling decoration painted on the piece in his trademark black pigment. At first glance, the question of use arises, what place would this pot play in a home and then, as if struck by a bat, the mind reels at the possibilities. Through the millennia vessels of containment have paved the way for our futures; safeguarding food, seeds, medicines and a variety of essentials necessary for both short and long term existence. This small covered pot is a link in a timeline of such vessels and as such, stands out of time and can be viewed in the same manner in another hundred years. As with many simple pots, it is amazing the bridge they construct between past and present and lidded vessels made from country to country and culture to culture over vast expanses of time.

STRIGIFORMES

Illustrated is a large charger painted by Iwao Akiyama (b. 1921). Akiyama is a Japanese print artist best known for his casual and spontaneous imagery of owls, cats and cattle. His prints and images are imbued with a subtle and sly sense of humor and many of his prints include poetry and maxims, some based on Buddhist teachings. Akiyama was originally studying to be an oil painter when he discovered the works of Munakata Shiko and met him. He was so taken by the artist, his work and process, that he went on to study with the master print maker from 1959 to 1965.

This large, whimsical charger has all of the tell tale characteristics of Akiyama's work and the variegation and depth of the glaze and strong form act as a wonderful canvas for his painting. There is a long standing history of  artists in Japan, working across various medium, just think about Takeuchi Seiho for a moment. It would not have taken much persuasion to get Akiyama to decorate pottery and based on this example, he had some experience accentuating forms and using the pigments to their fullest. I am unsure who threw the Hagi style pot, but the image and calligraphy is all Akiyama.

BY ANY OTHER NAME

I have never been one to make chaire necessarily, but was asked to recently by a customer. Instead, I decided to make a small covered spice jar, because after all, "he who controls the spice, controls the universe". My basic hesitancy to make chaire stems from an inability to acquire bone, horn, wood or ivory lids for the pot and as such I prefer to just make a very small covered jar and let people use them for whatever they will. The illustrated piece, with and without the lid, is under 3.5" tall and is glazed overall in a temmoku and then dipped in the iron red, tetsu-yu glaze. The chaire is glazed overall, including the rim and the lid was fired separately. Aside from the glaze, the only decoration to the pot is the incised line around the shoulder and the one pronounced drip on the front of the pot. I made a group of these small jars in the last firing as they fit easily around other pieces. As energy costs continue to go up, I am looking for filler to take up every nook and cranny of the kiln and these small jars along with other small pieces help fill up space that previously may have been empty.

It would seem, every new pot presents some type of hurdle in the throwing, tooling or glazing, why should these be any different. Throwing the lid is a chore as I am 6'2" with large hands and making the tiny lids proved to be less than fun and I had to "reconstruct" a pair of old glaze tongs to hold and dip the little jars in the glaze. With no area on the foot or base to hold on to, tongs seemed the natural solution for dipping the pieces. The scale of the pot may have posed a few new challenges but one thing is for sure, it is easy to pack, uses very little bubble-wrap and fits in the free USPS Priority box!

IGA TEBACHI

The is just something magical about  wood-fired pots and this Iga-yaki tebachi, handled bowl, is certainly not exception. You have to admire the way the slight upgrade in the lip which borders the bowl, acted as a barrier, collecting the ash as it was forced past the pot in the velocity of the fire, pooling to frame the pot in a rich green bidoro. Though the lip acted as a dam, the build up  pushed the ash, cascading into the form creating  streams which pooled in the center and created this glassy surface. Once again the simplicity of the tebachi, belie the experience and engineering that went into the pot, knowing just where to create certain lines and where to put the pot in the kiln. In this case, the experience and know how is from master Iga potter, Kojima Kenji and the simple pot is the culmination of trial and error and a great many years of making pots, studying Ko-Iga and wrestling a degree of control out of the flame which help define these pots as modern day Iga-yaki. Looking at this piece, it is easy to see the poetic nature of the fire, written static on the  pot's surface in dazzling green bidoro.

A TOKONAME SURFACE

Illustrated is another pot by Tokoname legend, Osako Mikio. This evocative hanaire first had a glaze applied and then was fired in the fire-mouth of his wood kiln. The sometimes subtle, ash coated pot has given way to a molten yet luminescent surface of varying hues reminiscent of some long buried Roman glass. The complex nature of the surface is tempered by the simplicity of form, another trademark of the potter. Though I have not seen this pot in person, I handled a chawan a long while back with a nearly identical surface and I can say, it makes for a wonderfully rich Tokoname surface that has a great deal to say both visually and to the sense of touch.

THE LAST FIRING

I was asked for a few pictures from my last firing and thought I might just as well put them up on my blog. The first picture is of a group of saffron and tetsu-yu glazed double gourd vases, the tallest about 12 inches or so. The second illustration is of a pair of wasp-waisted covered jars, one in saffron and the other in tetsu-yu glazes, both about 12 inches as well.

YET ANOTHER BLUE MONDAY

The weather forecast  for the area called for the possibility of a major Nor'easter, though it looks like we may have dodged that storm, thanks to the shelter of the valley and surrounding terrain. It is however, a rather cold, bleak, rainy day and getting things done has been a bit of a chore. After last week's firing, I needed to get several orders packed up and out the door and want to concentrate on working out a few test ideas that I have been thinking about. It should make for a casual break between "production" cycles. As the work day started, I threw the obligatory group of  test yunomi/cups first, then hit the packing duties which I am especially fond of.

Illustrated is a simple Persian blue  glazed bowl that came out of the test kiln the other day. It has a black underglaze design over porcelain and was fired to just under 2200 degrees. It is intended as an EDB (every day bowl) and I will use it for a while to see how it stands up to actual use.

WHAT"S LUCK GOT TO DO WITH IT

A very perceptive collector friend of mine was lucky enough to happen on to this phenomenal Tsukigata Nahiko Oni-Shino hanaire a while back. I say lucky, but luck had nothing to do with it really. He saw and exceptional piece and committed to acquiring it, despite the financial strain. This Tsukigata pot is one of those classic front & back pots with the face as you see it and the rear having a molten, iron rich flow of glaze and ash cascading down the rear. The face has these unctuous rolls of thick Shino frozen for all time framed by iron and ash from its battle within the fiery kiln controlled in part by a master potter. The form of this vase, is one of a group that Tsukigata used throughout his career and strikes a monumental, nearly totemic stance with the surface accentuating and painting the lines of the pot.

As if the very nature and quality of this textbook surface was not enough, this pot appeared in the book highlighting Tsukigata's pioneering achievements in the book; ONI-SHINO (1974).  As a friend once reminded me, the only thing better than having a truly great pot, is to have the pot illustrated in a book, it is hard to discredit at that point. This timeless pot shows a glimpse into the creative maelstrom that defines Oni-Shino and stands as testament to one of the great innovators of Shino of the 20th century.

"Chance favors the prepared mind." Louis Pasteur (1822-1895)

A SECOND VIEW

I ended up getting ahead of myself a bit and started glazing on Sunday, so I loaded Monday afternoon and  fired on Tuesday. Schedules are flexible and when my wife goes in to work on Sunday, I slipped off to the studio to get things started. I unloaded the glaze this afternoon and was pleasantly surprised not a single piece had glaze running off the pot, no stuck feet, no stuck lids, in many ways an ideal firing. The only drawback to a firing that is predominantly one glaze combo is the sameness. Once I started moving pots away from each other and looking at them out in the sunlight, the character of each pot was far more apparent than on two tables filled with saffron and iron red surfaces.

The overglazes, the saffron yellow iron and the iron red are both made from the same base glaze, the only difference is the use of yellow iron oxide in the one and Spanish red iron oxide in the other. However once placed on the alkaline clear and my temmoku, it is obvious how much different they are from each other. Out of the firing, the double gourd vases came out rather well and considering I haven't thrown this form since my arrival in the Mohawk Valley, I think they came out strong with a nice curved rise from the foot. All in all, not a bad firing, lost one test cup and one teabowl out of the entire firing, in baseball this would be batting .990!

Illustrated is the same group, now fired that I used last Friday while they were all still bisque. There is too much light streaming into the studio windows, making for a terrible photo, but I think you get the idea.

"What we anticipate seldom occurs, what we least expected generally happens."

                                                                             Benjamin Disraeli (1804-1881)

PAPER, PLASTIC OR JUTE

This past weekend, I was set a task to find something which has been packed away since a good number of moves ago. We have moved a number of times since 1998, principally for my wife's job, after all, what potter would move over and over again by choice. In the search, an item at the top of one of the totes, brought me back, quite a few years. Folded, neatly on the top was a jute, environmentally friendly,  shopping bag I had designed back in 2001/2002. I was approached by the Show Of Hands shops of the ODC (Ohio Designer Craftsman) to design a bag using one of my It's Still Life designs for the assignment.

At this point, I had been represented by the ODC/SOH stores in North Olmstead, Columbus and Cincinnati for nearly a decade and my It's Still Life and the Black & White slip trailed work were my best selling pottery at the time. The restrictions were simple, a basically square design and the limited to the use of six colors. Illustrated is the bag that they produced from my original design, It's Still Life, the actual design is call; " I Am Still Waiting". It was a good deal of fun to see the project from sketch to product and I must admit, even more satisfying was seeing people carrying the bag at the mall and at the craft shows that the ODC sponsored around Ohio.