DEPRESSED BOWL

Despite the fact that I keep posting up pictures of teabowls and other Japanese "inspired" pots, at my core I am a rather practical, functional potter. I like the concept of everyday use and function and find it a rather significant motivator on most days though there are times that I just like to see what else can be done with a vase, a covered piece or a bowl. This temmoku bowl with side lugs and an overall rain pattern around the top and bottom of the bowl is not one of those pieces, rather it is rooted in function. The indented, depressed channel that surrounds the pot breaks up the continuity of the form as well as the decoration making for a visual focal point to the piece and serving a function in aiding in picking up the bowl while wearing oven mitts if deemed necessary. This is a rather basic bowl, meant for a modest amount of content and perched on a rather wide, stable foot which is designed for a typical "nuclear" family or a small get together as it will likely hold enough for six people unless one has invited your local sumo stable to dinner in which case I suggest one, possibly two of these for each guest. You can see the basic origins of these bowl forms by checking out this previous blog post
 
https://albedo3studio.blogspot.com/2016/06/cross-cultural.html



 

 
 

SPEAKING OF IGA-ORIBE

I had the opportunity to handle this rather interesting Iga-Oribe mallet vase a couple of years back. It has rather nice, if a bit slender proportions but the posture and sense to the pot made it rather appealing not to mention the rich painterly surface created through a combination of glazing and wood firing. Made by Mino veteran, Mizuno Takuzo, this vase is part of a classic body of work in this style by the potter which also includes Mino-Iga, various Shino surfaces, Oribe, Ki-Seto, Seto-Guro and quite a few others. Perhaps one of the really appealing features of this piece, besides the animated form is the wonderful pooled surface at the depressed area of the shoulder composed of rich, translucent blue-green on one side and a milky, cloudy light blue on the other caused by its proximity to direct fire during the firing process. Though a rather serious, Momoyama influenced pot, there is something quite spirited and lively about the pot, it just exudes a sense of the positive which I quite enjoy and gives  this Iga-Oribe mallet a certain degree of curb appeal and a touch of everyday nobility.

WAIT, WHO?

A friend I share pictures with sent me this photo a while back and when I read the label, I was like, wait, who? This chawan is by Bizen legend, Mori Togaku and when his name springs to mind I think of his massive kiln, large, and I mean large storage jars and a variety of Bizen fired pots from chadogu and beyond. What doesn't come to mind is wood fired glazed pottery as this illustration clearly is and before you ask, it is marked with his mark and the box is clearly signed but the aesthetic is just not what I normally think of. Now admittedly, I may be out of the loop or just not up on the totality of Mori Togaku  but if I were pressed to identify this piece from just this single photo, Mori would not be in my top 50 answers. Actually at first glance I thought it had a bit of a Mino-Iga vibe like the surfaces of some of Mizuno Takuzo's pots though obviously not by him either, honestly I just wouldn't have narrowed it down to Mori Togaku. As irony would have it, once I received these photos, plucked from the electronic ether, I actually ran in to a second piece glazed in a similar but not identical manner so my suspicion is there are a number of these pots out there. For my last confession, I have really not followed the work of Mori Togaku all that much, not sure exactly why and despite the fact that I realize he makes some wonderful pieces he is just not really on my constant radar. I really like the two pots of this style I ran in to and would love to see more, especially a mizusashi but since these are the only two examples I have seen in thirty years I suspect it may be a while before I see another or with the way things work, perhaps tomorrow.

FIGURATIVELY SPEAKING

I stumbled on this image the other day while collecting up a group of slides to be converted to digital images and had honestly forgotten I had made this set. Back in the mid-90s, while still living in Cleveland I was asked if I would like to be in a figurative show and given that I had three months to prepare, I thought, what the heck, why not. I remember making two sets of these stone texture cups and pitchers, several cup and saucer sets with "Mayan" inspired figures and a large covered house box with a series of alien life forms, really landscapeman designs on the piece and a couple of large plates with painted nudes on them. It was a fun task as it got me to think a little outside the box and away from safer designs that I felt comfortable with and out of this came some ideas that I use to this day like the Rapunzel , Europa and the Bull and Leda and the Swan. The illustrated set was easily made from cutting out slabs and then squeezing them until they create a puffy, three dimensional form and adding handles which also carry on the anthropomorphic attitude of the pieces the stone texture and inlay accents just finished off the pieces. It is odd how I couldn't remember the pieces until I saw the slide and then it actually brought me back to where I was when they were made, back at my Hillbrook Road address in Cleveland Heights with the ever present  music playing in the background.

BOWLED OVER

I am constantly amazed at the wild and unique variety of modern Japanese pottery and even more so regarding pieces based on centuries old traditions with a modern and spirited approach. I recently had this large and impressive bowl in my hands which is based on the old tradition of Kuro-Satsuma, Black Satsuma which see its roots in the late 16th century with the influx of Korean potters in to Tateno, Tatsumonji and Neashirogawa in Kyushu. This classic yet modern Naeshirogawa-yaki  piece was made by Araki Mikijiro and was showcased at the ASAHI CERAMICS EXHIBITION in 1983 (where it won a Special Award). The slideshow video should show off the variety of color variations and wonderful repeated detail in the design which brings a rather elegant atmosphere to what is a functional pot of which Yanagi Soetsu considered the works of Kuro-Satsuma as a standard bearer of the Mingei movement. The exceptional use of motif, decoration for which Araki is well known, truly brings this pot to life, animates it and makes it anything but your standard Sunday dinner serving bowl. I didn't use a lot of photos for this slideshow but I suspect you will still get a sense of the presence and scale of the large, pleasing and impressive Japanese pot.

LASTING IMPRESSION

At first glance it is easy to see this Shigaraki piece as larger than it is but in fact it is only a guinomi. What gives this piece the deceptive ability to confuse is a combination of form, posture and a great surface all "engineered" by veteran potter, Kohyama Yasuhisa.  Everything about this guinomi from its animated posture, well conceived foot and undulation to the lip gives the impression of a chawan while the surface paints a narrative much larger than the dimensions of the pot. Admittedly, I am biased when it comes to the work of Kohyama-san but I think it may be somewhat easy to make a good first impression, but making a lasting impression like this little beauty, now that is a different story.

TA&H2

Illustrated is a thrown, altered and hacked at square teabowl that I posted up a while back just after it was freshly slipped. The finished product shows the heavily fluted bowl glazed with an Oribe glaze and areas of thick, deep green running diagonally following the flutes around the bowl. I was able to encourage the glaze running by brushing an added layer or black iron over the ridge areas and you can see the results. As you may guess this is a large teabowl and though it was made as such, I suspect it can fill just about any function you put your mind to from filling it with dip to standing upright biscotti in it. There was something a lot of fun about squaring up this form, getting the exterior lines just right and then just quickly and asymmetrically fluting the surface bringing a slight amount of chaos to an otherwise well planned out geometric form.

"From chaos, comes order."  Nietzsche

GLASSY GEM

Illustrated is a classic and rather wonderful chaire by Raku and Iga potter, Konishi Heinai.  As with many of these photos, this is not a photo I took or a pot that I handled but I certainly thought it worth sharing as a stellar example of Konishi's work which at first glance almost appears like it was dipped in a glass tank and coated in a beautiful coating of rich bidoro. The form is strong and medieval in appearance with a simple, even subtle design rendered around the pot which is further accentuated by the all natural ash that has covered this chaire. I have seen and handled a number of pots by Konishi Heinai over the years and can say without hesitation this may rank as the finest and my favorite chaire by him that I have seen; the surface is electric and shimmery like a coveted glassy gem which in all likelihood would be hard to play second fiddle to the chawan in use during the tea ceremony. Though this could be considered ever so slightly old school, I believe that pots like this will keep traditions like Iga on the straight and narrow and serve as an archetype into the future in the same way medieval pots served this function for potters like Konishi Heinai in the recent century past.

FILE UNDER; SMALL WORLD

A week or so ago, I received an email from a collector from the Great White North letting me know that a photo I had put up actually shows off a guinomi that he had acquired. The photo in question was actually sent to me by another collector whom had visited Kumano in Echizen some time past and to be honest, I thought what are the odds and even more so, what a small world has been created by internet connectivity. The guinomi is by Kumano Kuroemon and is quite a beauty, the surface is a sheet of pale green fractured ice with an area of built up ash running down the very face of the piece. The form is classic Kumano, broad and well articulated perched on a generous foot that adds both stability and a sense of purpose to this small giant. At first glance it is easy to see what Kumano's surfaces are all about but as you delve deeper in to them, they are a complex assortment of varying effects, chemistry and fantastical firing. It may only be a guinomi but from my perspective, a truly good pot can fill up quite a large space where a small pot  can write volumes about a craft and art of a potter as this certainly does.

And from the political desk of I, POTTER the quintessential differences between Canada and the US in a short video in case anyone was confused or wondering;

18" PLUS & 2LBS. OF CLAY

I was recently asked to throw a couple of larger serving bowls in stoneware, destined for temmoku and ash and temmoku and iron for their surfaces. I don't make a lot of bowls any bigger than a normal family will use as they are hard to ship and need the right fit to sell, but an order is an order. Once in the studio, I put on one of my favorite best of the 80s cds, wedged up the clay and started throwing with the hope that throwing two bowls would yield two bowls out of the kiln. As I was throwing and with the help of the music, my mind wandered back to Cleveland State where I was throwing a series of 24" serving pieces for a caterer and to one particular female student who just had a series of questions for everything I was doing. On this particular morning, studio tasks out of the way, I was throwing and then the inevitable questions  to which she arrived at "well how much clay was I using?". It may have been my mood, the music, the tasks at hand but without skipping a beat I told her they were just 5lbs of clay each*. Off she went, spending several hours throwing and just always came up shy, by half. I realize this may sound cruel but as it turned out, by the end of her series, she had thrown bowls larger than she had ever done so out of 5lbs of clay. I let her in on the actual weight and told her they were only 2lbs of clay at which point she figured out that I wasn't exactly truthful with her which brings me back to today with two 18" plus bowls out of a mere 2lbs of clay, between them.

(* My wife thought it important to mention that during my time at CSU, people all played jokes on each other, they were not malicious, it was just part of the atmosphere of a fun, jovial, competitive pottery studio.)