Though
one has come to expect the brilliant saidei works of the late Miyashita Zenji,
in his youth he followed in his father's footstep creating a wide array of
pottery in various styles and glazes. Among one notable style that Miyashita
mastered was this Kinyo style which makes for a rather pretty and useful
guinomi which has a great, compact form, exceptional lip highlighted by a dark
rim and an overall luminous textured punctuated by a deep crimson spot signifying
the front of the pot. I have tried to highlight the various qualities of this
guinomi in a short video slideshow and hope that this shows off a lesser known
style of Miyashita Zenji, one of the surface geniuses of the 20th century.
I
was working on cleaning up some images of the Kato Tsuneyoshi Mino-Iga
mizusashi that I had taken on the path to building a slideshow video of the
piece and came across this image. Though this pot has a great deal of rich
green ash areas it is on the lid where it really shines; deep, emerald green
pools that look like a mineral cluster or outcroppings any adventurer would be
thrilled to stumble upon. I have to admit, I am more than smitten with this
effect both shizen, all natural in its occurrence as well as through some
artifice of technology though it is all the more impressive when it happens
through the intensity of the firing and astute choice of varying woods. In
either method it still appears as if some guiding provenance has touched the
pot and created a surface that one can get lost in and spend any amount of time
in some degree of contemplation. There it is, a wonderful shortcut, just a
simple arrangement of a handful of certain chemicals, elements collected to create an effect
as close to perfect as my eye can see and unlike actual emeralds you can forego
the extreme temperatures, dynamic pressure and the millions of years in the
making.
I
made a few bowl the other day, they were thrown a bit thick, altered to a more
or less square form and then hacked at a bit with my home made fluting tool.
What I ended up with was a squared bowl with intentionally irregular, diagonal
flutes for a rustic look, then the bowl was dipped in white slip and then
brushed to even out the surface. Once dry I am intending on glazing it in Oribe
and then giving it a light using of my black glaze for a surface I am referring
to as Kuro-Oribe even though it is not so in the truest sense of the term. I
think it should end up with a neat surface and I am hoping to encourage some of
the droozy effects moving down the diagonal channels. One step at a time, first
it needs to make it through the bisque firing.
It
is funny how things go, the flow of coincidence (?), pots coming in waves or
seeing a group of pots by a potter you have never seen before. Recently I
handled a group of pots by Tokoname potter, Kato Yoshiaki (b.1934) who I was
acquainted with through illustrations like the one of this wildly glazed Shino
mizusashi from a book that I have. In the group was two very nice chawan, one
in an older style surface looking like some early Edo tea piece and the other
much closer to the pictured mizusashi though not quite as active a surface
perched on a high foot with great lift. I was immediately infatuated with his
work once I was able to study the pieces, from several different collection in
which despite being modern and unique works, the pots all have a very old
sensibility to them, that timeless quality that I like with gritty, honest
surfaces.This mizusashi has that
quality as well, 1990 or 1890, either is possible though the boldness and
posture of form and controlled chaos of the surface put it firmly in the modern
camp one can't help but think that it was made during the hectic and creative
days of the Meiji era or possibly earlier. It is wonderful to handle a group of
pots by a "new" potter and this experience has left me a fan of Kato
Yoshiaki's impressive sharkskin style Shino among other surfaces. I
plan on making a slideshow video of each of the Kato Yoshiaki chawan in the
future and will put them up on Youtube and my blog when they are finished.
I
can think of very few potters that are able to create a simple, functional
vessel, in this case a tokkuri and make it such a pleasure to use as does Kakurezaki
Ryuichi. Visually engaging, this Bizen tokkuri checks off the list of all the
bells in whistles from wonderful form, great surface, exceptional texture,
masterfully functional and just a real treat to put through its paces though it
can do so much more than pour. Created by throwing a basic form, the pot is
brought to life by paddling, pushing, cutting and even cajoling the clay to do the bidding that the manipulator wishes, what
appears is a tokkuri distinct, idiosyncratic to this potter, unlike no other
and set apart even from its relations. Kakurezaki is of course a master at
moving clay, creating and fine tuning evocative form and choosing both great
clay and wood for his firings; this piece has benefited from all of his skills
from imagination to firing and though a simple tokkuri, it is evidently so much
more. You can see more of this little gem over on my Trocadero marketplace;
https://www.trocadero.com/stores/albedo3studio/catalog/
I
decided to try my hand at making a few faceted & banded tokkuri and this is
what I came up with. It is only about seven inchesor so tall and should make a proper size by
the time it is finished fired and my thought process is through some degree of
measured persistence I may get a better feel for this process at any scale or form. I am
most likely to glaze this in Oribe to allow all the lines and sharp angles show
through the surface and collect on whatever points it can. I made the central
ring of the bottle a bit depressed to aid in the handling and use of the vessel
and it will remain to see how that decision pans out. I think all the lines and
angles should like quite nice under the Oribe and will try to remember to post
a finished photo when the pot is finished. "No rock so hard but
that a little wave may beat admission in a thousand years." Alfred, Lord
Tennyson
In
studying the classics, in this case Ki-Seto, one of the essential 20th century
potters of that idiom that needs to be singled out is of course Kagami Shukai
(1941-2009) whose pots were deeply rooted in the styles archetypes with a sense
of his modern touch. The illustrated Ki-Seto mizusashi has that classic
sensibility appearing like a molded pot of the Edo period yet was thrown and
altered to this unique shape. The lozenge form of this pot goes back to various
traditions and styles of the Edo period which ties this piece firmly between
antiquity and modern times cloaked in Kagami's well known Ki-Seto glaze with
detailed areas highlighted where marks were made in the soft clay. The whole
package is made complete with a wonderful cryptomeria cypress lid with attached
wood handle, the overall feel with this lid roots it even more firmly in days
gone by. I think it is impossible to think about modern Ki-Seto without
bringing Kagami Shukai in to the conversation where he is associated with the likes
of Arakawa Toyozo, Kato Kozo, Hori Ichiro, Hara Kenji and Hayashi Kyosuke,
there may be others to add to this list but there is no denying this is certainly
good company to keep.
A while back I had a rather
nice Oribe mizusashi in hand that a collector was parting with and I managed to
take quite a few photos of the piece which I will eventually turn in to a
slideshow video. The mizusashi is by Higashida Shigemasa and the interior
perspective photo illustrated here captures the wondrous and almost eerie
iridescence that was created through all of the glaze pooling at the bottom of
the pot and the copper trapped at the surface.As you look around the interior of the pot there are so many varying
effects, like a light show that are to be seen depending on the angle and light
source from the mentioned iridescence to thick blankets of speckled copper-blue
pools with crystals manifesting on the surface. It is a shame that there are so
many pots we are both familiar with and only getting acquainted with and their
mysteries are hidden under lids and lurking on the unseen sides of photographs.
I hope this adds a small dimension to this mizusashi by Higashida and the ever
expanding possibilities of, in this case Oribe pottery.
Illustrated is a teabowl
that came out of a recent firing along with a few other bowls in this series.
Though I realize it is certainly a misnomer, I have been referring to this type
as Kuro-Oribe style, black Oribe as depending on the use of the overglaze I can
make it go from what you see here to a very dark, blackish surface.Name aside, this is a fun and somewhat
unpredictable surface to work with areas of droozy, running glaze and sparkling
iron specks that catch the light adding a new twist on the existing Oribe that
I am working with. Despite the addition of the overglaze and the formation of
small cell like attributes across the surface the sharp edges of the facets
still poke through showing a glimpse of the clay color in the midst of the
green and black of the bowl. As a last observation, this new combination runs
to build up a super rich surface on all of the horizontal lines and projections
from lip to the base of the bowl creating an interesting segmentation of the
pot. I realize there is still a lot more to try with this glaze combination but
so far so good.
Though
I would be hard pressed to date this positively old school rustic wood fired mallet
vase, if pushed I would guess it was likely made in the mid-1970s. Made by
Takauchi Shugo, just prior to this date he had changed his life and put suit
and tie on a rack and traded them in for more practical pottery making cloths;
jeans, apron, denim shirt, the new uniform of a craftsman. Quite a number of
Shugo's early work are strictly wood fired, haikaburi style or glazed and wood
fired with a wonderful range of surfaces that speak less about Mashiko where he
ended up than about an inner vision bursting at the seams. It would be hard to
confuse this mallet vase for Mashiko-yakihaving a more Bizen, Echizen or even Tokoname appearance based on a more
traditional and rigid form seen by many of the earlier potters but not quite
like the forms of Arakawa and Tsukigata for instance. That being said, the
surface compliments the form rather nicely making for a rich appearance on a
rugged and honest pot. Though I greatly appreciate and even covet Takeuchi
Shugo's broad interpretation of Oribe ware I find his early wood and salt fired
pots quite enthralling and worth all the attention they can absorb. There is an old quote by Alexander Pope that has always intrigued me, it goes;
"An honest man's the noblest work of God", if this is reasonable or
true, is an honest pot the noblest work of a potter?
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