The box is inscribed IGA STYLE CHAWAN but I think it is
quite easy to look at this piece and see that it has Iga written across the
entire surface. Made in Gifu Prefecture by Mizuno Takuzo, despite being a
traditional Mino potter, he created a wide array of distinct wood fired pots
that center around Mino-Iga and Iga style pottery. This Iga style chawan is a
typical example of Mizuno's unglazed, haikaburi style wood fired pieces that
despite being made miles away from Iga have many of the tell tale signs of that
distinct pottery excepting the clay body which is much more Mino in origin. The
face of this chawan has that medieval presence that I am very fond of that at
first glance defies its age with running ash giving way to the rough surface
underneath with areas of spatula work and other slight manipulation giving an
overall depth and sense of movement to the piece. The green ash highlights the
undulating lip and stoic form which balances very well with the exposed clay
color of the kodai. I can't help but think that this purposeful pot is an
honest combination of both style and substance all in the guise of a rather
forthright "Iga style" chawan.
I recently spent a little
time with this rather nice chaire by arguably, the father of modern Iga,
Tanimoto Kosei. The chaire is of a rather sturdy and classic medieval form with
a great surface which, like the Moon has a light side and a dark side. The area
facing away from the fire has a wonderful, green ash surface with areas of deep
pooled effects that add a sense of animation to the pot while the area that
faced the fire has a dark, almost ominous surface of dark greys and a shiny
black that masks much of the surface in shadows and mystery. I have seen quite
a few chaire by Tanimoto Kosei over the years and for me, it is a safe bet this
is among the finest I have seen showcasing a great form and even greater
surface to create an excellent Iga example. I took quite a few photos of this
chaire and put together a short video slideshow to give a sense of what this
Tanimoto Kosei Iga chaire offered in person, I hope this gives you the sense of the
pot.
Since our house is built in
to the ground, generally speaking my studio stays at a somewhat constant temperature
of around 60 to 65 degrees but today is a bit different. With well over a foot
of snow, the storm has given way to a cold front and it was -11 this morning
which resulted in a studio that was just a bit below 50 degrees. From my
perspective this is an environment that is just not really conducive to glazing
so calling an audible, I called a cold day. I have a good handful of pots ready
to go when it warms up a bit and illustrated are two previously decorated and
glazed/ fired teabowls that are somewhat similar to a small group of teabowls
that will be glazed up in Oribe, ash, saffron iron and an amber as weather
permits. There is an upside to the cold snap in the studio, it gives me a bit
more time to consider what glazes to use on what pots and eliminates the last
group of pots all being glazed exactly the same. "Time flies over
us but leaves its shadow behind." Nathaniel Hawthorne "The
time is always right to do what is right." Martin Luther King Jr.
Before anyone says anything,
yes, another stupid cat photo. Back just before Thanksgiving my wife and I made
our way to a fellow collectors home and then brought back a number of pots that
the owner wished to part with and of course, Khan immediately was attracted to
the big Oribe one first chance he got. In using the floor as a staging point
for photographing what I did not realize was that the owner had a small slip of
paper inside the large Kato Toyohisa Oribe jar as a means of identification and
though I missed it entirely, Khan somehow did not. As I was photographing
another piece, I realized that Khan was doing absolutely everything possible to
get himself entirely in to the jar as his arm was just not long enough to reach
the slip of paper. I retrieved the "cat toy" and showed it to Khan at
which point he totally lost interest and went off to sleep somewhere. It is
amazing how being brought up around pottery, he is extremely gentle with the
pieces and even more surprising that he is just as aware of a piece of paper in
the bottom of a jar at twenty paces. "Time spent with a cat is
never wasted." Sigmund Freud
I really don't know a lot
about Akazu-yaki other then it springs from Aiichi Prefecture and is considered
under the general umbrella of Seto pottery finding its roots going all the way
back to the Heian period and Sueki wares. What is quite obvious is that this
mizusashi has a classic Mino-Iga appearance of a feudal vessel with a rather
rich surface composed of ash and iron glazes and was made by Akazu-yaki potter
Kato Tsuneyoshi (Tsutsumi?). Like the ware itself, I don't know much about Kato
Tsuneyoshi but based on the vessel, it is exceedingly well crafted with a well
articulated surface, classic lugs and handle applied to finish off the pot and
did I mention the thick green pool on the lid surrounding the handle? Besides
the stoic, medieval form, the depth and luminescence of the ash really catches
my attention, soaking the form in a beautiful surface of varying green bidoro
which is punctuated by areas of a
translucent and opaque iron evoking the image of a waterfall pouring down the
pot, a narrative painted around the pot in glaze and experience. Some of the
most beautiful effects take place around the mizusashi as the base projects
creating a strong and stable platform for the piece where ash and iron are highlighted
as they collect creating a vivid boundary of deep green and iron from the
cascading glazes. Though this is the first and only pot that I have encountered
by this potter, it is quite clear that he is quite well practiced based on the
way the mizusashi is potted, through the dignity and purpose of form and the
skillful application of glaze and I look forward to my next (?) encounter with
Akazu-yaki by Kato Tsunayoshi .
The illustrated teabowl came out of a firing about a
month (?) back but honestly at this point, I see everything as a blur and
keeping track or who, what, where and when is more a suggestion than an
absolute. In faceting this bowl I accounted for two very distinct raised bands
around the body as both a tactile and visual element as well as to allow the
glaze to build a nice deep ring at the top of all of the protruding points.
Once set up after throwing, I poured a thin coat of white slip at two spots on
the piece which accounts for the distinct areas that are brighter than the rest
of the bowl and the surface worked well with a nice mottled affect moving from
rich, deep green to areas of iron creating a rather natural patchwork effect.
The foot is a simple tooled one with a notch cut out for both functional and to
break up the circular regularity. I am enjoying making this style teabowl, none
come out exactly the same and there is a spontaneity and directness to the
process and form which presents a new angle on my thrown pieces.
Illustrated is a screen
capture for a wonderful old Japanese documentary that I found about Arakawa
Toyozo. The fact that this is subtitled is certainly a bonus but seeing footage
of perhaps one of the most famous potters of the 20th Century gives one a great
insight into a way with Shino. This documentary was made circa 1968 by
documentary film maker/ director; Matsukawa Yasuo (1931-2006) and is known by
its Japanese title, IMA WA MUKANSHI SHINO TO OKINA. I don't want to say that
such videos are rare but they are not seen frequently enough outside of Japan
and any insight in to the nature of a master's work is certainly not to be
overlooked. "Life is a succession of lessons which must be lived
to be understood. All is a riddle, and the key to a riddle is another riddle."Ralph Waldo Emerson
Illustrated is a lovely ink
painting by veteran Mino potter, Wakao Toshisada. Though best known for his
classic Momoyama inspired or Rimpa influenced pieces; Wakao has created quite a
few kakejiku and shikishi covering a broad field of subject matter, of which
this nasubi eggplant scroll is one. What brought this piece to mind was that
tonight is vegetarian dinner night and my wife mentioned eggplant and pasta,
should I mention I am not a huge fan of eggplant? A compromise was struck, and
my pasta will be with charcoaled onions and peppers, though she is sticking
with the eggplant for herself. All this discussion of the evil purple solanum
made me remember that I had a few illustrations of an eggplant scroll by
Toshisada so I sought it out and here it is in all its simplicity. At its core,
this painting gives me a quick flashback to the famous Mu Ch'i scroll of six
persimmons, though I am not exactly sure why. Admittedly if you told me about a
painting of two eggplants, I am not sure it would distract me from counting
sand but after seeing the way the ink was applied, the nasubi casually
displayed and portrayed and the use of the surrounding negative space, I am
sold on eggplant, in ink if not in actuality.
I'll start out by saying
that this is not a mug, it is a bowl with a "stabilizing" handle. I
first started making this type of bowl way back in the early 90s when a customer
showed me an old, redware bowl with a handle on it dating to the late 19th or
early 20th century. To be fair, it was a bit more like an oversized old
fashioned dinner coffee cup but it was intended as a bowl for soup or what have
you. I modified the general idea and added a straight sided collar to keep
things from sloshing out or spilling from the bowl while in use and added a
handle that was more about stabilizing the form rather than as a full on handle
though it functions perfectly well in that capacity. The customer was pleased
with the idea, I made six or eight for them and have been making them ever
since in some incarnation or another since that point. This one is of thrown
stoneware, impressed medallions around the belly and glazed in a temmoku that
has areas of a blue tint and breaks to a fine rust where thin. My wife and I
actually still have a terra cotta set that I made back in Cleveland and we
use them for everything from soup, chili, ice cream, stew and just about
anything else you can eat out of a bowl.
We had our first day of real
sunshine here today, the first in a long time so I took the opportunity to move
some pots around and let the sun shine down on this small pot. Besides being a
gift from Warren MacKenzie way back in the 90s, I have always been quite fond
of this amber celadon and wood ash glazed "utensil holder" for the
purposeful form, the wonderful texture, the thick, durable mouth and the applied feet
which change the shadow line of the pot. Thrown out of porcelain, this pot has a
great weight to it, made to stand up to the rigors of daily use for which it
was intended though it is used infrequently here instead holding a place of
reverence as well as serving as an ideal about what it means to truly be a functional
pot.
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