SOULMATES?

I recently had this Nishiura Takeshi Echizen tokkuri here before send it on its international journey to finally be connected with a long, lost soulmate. Just waiting to be filled this Nishiura guinomi makes a great companion to the tokkuri with surfaces that show off Echizen wood firing in quite a good light. despite the fact that the internet has draw everything much closer together, like a huge electronic Pangaea, putting together sets from disparate locations has become the norm provided you can find the pieces in the first place. Though obviously both originated in Echizen, Japan, the tokkuri has taken a more circuitous route to the new owner than has the guinomi which came from potter, to gallery and then on to its new home.

The tokkuri's path is a bit more nebulous though it did travel about Japan before coming through a number of US States before it arrived in my hands and then on to presumably the last leg of its international journey. I realize these details regarding the travels and stopovers are of little or no consequence to most but I find the migratory patterns of pottery to be quite interesting as well as the motivations behind the push to get these pottery objects to move along in the first place. The current owner of the tokkuri had an interesting phrase, "catch and release" for pots and collectors who own pieces for a time and then pass them along to their new homes. The one point that I can interject regarding "catch and release" is that as both potter and collector having the ability to see and study a far reaching and ever changing group of pieces is always an enjoyable experience and it saves just a bit on airfare and rail passes to Japan.

Photo courtesy of a collector abroad.

THIS VETERAN'S DAY

I wanted to take a moment during these unsettled times to thank all of our Veteran's for the lasting sacrifice and defense of our Nation without whom we would all be the lesser but for their service.

LEST WE FORGET  (BertonBraley)                                                                                                

Our dead rest on the breast of France

And all around the world

Where by war's grim or splendid chance

Our banners were unfurled:

So whether here or overseas

Their bodies chance to lie,

We pay full honour unto these

Who did not fear to die.

Because they dared, because they died

We and our nation live,

Our liberty, our hope, our pride

Were gifts that they could give:

And since for all these gifts the price

Was life -- they held life cheap

And blithely made the sacrifice

And laid them down to sleep.

O, dead of many wars, who fought

With spirit high and pure,

The noble structure that you wrought

Shall evermore endure!

You held your country's cause above

All else: we, unafraid,

Will keep your country worthy of

The price you gladly paid.

MIXED METHODS

Back in March I mentioned the end of a Syracuse institution when Eureka Craft Gallery closed its doors. I admit it was hard to accept having been the longest continuous craft gallery that represented my work from 1992 to 2019 and it also meant that I had no gallery representation in that area. Several months back, Amy, a former employee of Eureka and the single person responsible for turning my wife and I on to a great bakery contacted me and ask if I would show in her gallery which she was planning on opening in August or September. I told her I would be happy to and delivered a group of pots to her in September and got to see her new space known as MIXED METHODS. In certain respects MM takes some of its cues from Eureka, not only filling a void left by the gallery closing but bringing a all that she had learned to a new, streamlined and crisp gallery setting while also espousing some "newer" concepts into a social media savvy age. MIXED METHODS is primarily focused on providing well made and unique items and objects in eight various mediums including; pottery, wood, fiber, glass and wood presenting a rich variety catering to all types of collectors and gift givers in a wide range of prices.

As the gallery progresses and takes root in the area the goal is to ultimately include evenings with "Meet the Artists" as well as trunk shows and other special events, one step at a time. The following was included in a recent email from MIXED METHODS owner, Amy; "I wanted to create a place to showcase artists' work from across the country. There are so many talented artists and 'neat' small businesses and I wanted to be able to have a place where someone could find creative, original and well made pieces - whether as a gift or something special for yourself. " In the end, "I decided to open a shop to continue to offer artists' items to the Syracuse area." From my experience what I can say about Amy and MIXED METHODS is she has excellent taste in pastries which I am sure will extend to those things carefully considered for her gallery and this new destination just makes another excellent reason to visit Syracuse located dead smack in the center of NY State. MIXED METHODS  can be found at 215 East Water Street (Rear) in Syracuse.
 


https://letsgetmixed.com/



  https://www.instagram.com/letsgetmixed/

PERSONAL SPACE ISSUES

Illustrated is a close up detail of a Kumano Kuroemon Echizen vase that I received a while back, the photo that is. At first glance it may seem like the photographer has personal space issues but the truth is, getting to see details and nuances that you never get from a standard group of display or sales photos, it is exactly these types of images that add meat to a short treatise on the piece creating a broader narrative from pot to viewer. During the intense Kumano firing, this unglazed piece built up a nice coating of ash which over time melted and created a characteristic Echizen blue ash run that mingles with and within the dark, brownish bidoro which finds its origins in a calcium rich environment. Looking at this photo you can't help but me intrigued by the heavy throwing rings, marks circling the neck; traces of the potter's intense and quick struggle with the clay that along with the dynamic surface are locked in a Promethean battle for the rest of time (or as long as the molecular structure of the ceramics stands up against time).

ONE AT A TIME?

Last week I mentioned that I had settled on and made a number of groups of pieces to go to Connecticut in November. Among the styles selected is a small group of plum blossom pieces which includes a square tray form and misc. bowls and this picture is of them just recently decorated and detailed with sgraffito to outline each blossom. I like working in groups as it makes more sense to decorate ten similar pieces at a time then just one at a time, completing them as singular pots. Normally I try to get as many pots of a particular style going at the same time, normally I can get about twenty pieces or so laid out and going from one to another I can get each element completed so that by the time I am ready to incise the details around each leaf or blossom, the surfaces are nearly dry which is the best time for the sgraffito. I currently have a fair amount of pots drying that will need to be decorated but at the moment getting these smaller groups of falling leaves and plum blossom pieces completed gets me one step closer to getting everything buttoned up.

AN ALTERNATIVE VIEWPOINT

I took a few photos the other day of various pieces hanging around and came up with this alternative viewpoint of a rather nice Kakurezaki Ryuichi tokkuri. I realize that i posted this tokkuri up on my blog back in April but if you compare the two photos you can see how different the same piece can look with various variables affecting the image. In this photo there the surface texture running down the piece and the variety of natural ash effects tell a fuller story of the pot. I am a huge proponent of constantly re-photographing pottery in various lighting, different moods behind the lens and with additional cameras if possible. Over the years I have collected up quite a few digital images and love to revisit the folders for each pot to not only remind me of subtleties I may have forgotten but also to discover nuances that I may have missed previously. In this photo it is clear that the twilight illumination was just the right time and thing to bring out details that may have escaped this tokkuri's first encounter with my camera.

日

If I had only waited a day or two, I would have posted this photo of the Takahashi Wasaburo vase that recently made its way here. As you can see in this photo, the Sun decided to make an appearance and to my eye brought out the real character (and perhaps the best) of the pot and certainly the truer nature of the glaze combination. The sparkling kannyu surface shines through the iron variegated surface making for a rich and complex portrait that wraps around the entirety of the vase making for a rather exotic spectacle. When I first unboxed this pot I couldn't help but think of all of the wild and imaginative textures and colors of the creatures from the movie AVATAR and though I suspect the actual source for the film was the abundant diversity of nature of all types and form it would not surprise me if somewhere up on a shelf one of the pre-production designers had a handful of pots, among them perhaps one similar to this.

(I hope you don't mind all these detail pictures and sunlight photos but in many respects, capturing pots in varying circumstances and conditions can lead to a better understanding of what a piece actually looks like. How many people have received a pot that just doesn't look like its photo, jeez that sounds like what I keep hearing about internet dating!)

TWO-PARTER

Illustrated is a rather straight forward "falling leaves" vase that is a standard form that I make. This form is not really very complicated and it works well with various decoration on the surface and in this case the random use of the leaves includes inside the trumpet mouth and also on the foot. Perhaps the most complicated thing about this pot is that it is a two-parter, the base and neck are thrown separately in series, perhaps six bases and six necks and then they are matched up and looted together at which time the lugs are attached and each piece goes on for specific surface treatments from carved tebori, abstrakt resist, b&w slip or this treatment of random falling leaves. Perhaps the trickiest aspect of this design is that the slips are put on while the clay is wet and then the sgraffito is done once the clay is close to bone dry; using a large black foam sheet about 12" x 12" x 5" the vase is carefully carved to define the leaves. As I said this form and technique aren't really all that complicated, it just takes the right touch and timing to keep the piece from becoming more a two-parter again.

IT'S A SQUARE DEAL

I put together a rather short slideshow video to give a perspective of what this kaku-kinuta hanaire by Wakao Toshisada looks like in three dimensions. The thrown and squared up vase has a  surface of rather beaded pure white Shino with accents on the face and side of the form with rather vivid facets running from down the piece on the neck and the body. This vase is a rather distinctly simple piece without any extras depending rather on a solid and classic form, a certain blend of subtlety, austerity and strength and excellent proportions  which at the end of the day are all that is necessary to bring in and captivate an audience.

SURFACE TENSION

I have written about the maker of this interesting mallet style vase before, Takahashi Wasaburo who made the very first (real) chawan that my wife and I ever collected. Though in many respects this vase is rather different than our chawan, the depth and complexity of the surface is very similar with a base glaze of a kannyu style seiji that was dipped in a rich, deep, dark red iron glaze and then the potter let the firing and surface tension take over. The application of the two glazes and temperature have conspired to create a rather exotic and visually complex surface that conjures up some alien texture that has the viewer scanning the piece in an effort to make some distinct sense out of the pattern.

In some respects, this pot has an almost camouflaged appearance that takes a determined eye to read the fullness and motion of the form from the contrary tapers of body and neck to the soft, intentional depressed flutes around the piece. Depending on the light source the underlying seiji glaze sparkles creating a rich visual narrative of iron and feldspar presenting a unique and three dimensional landscape with the well thought out form as its canvas. Though this appears to be a rather unusual surface by the potter, I suspect that in order to get to this point in creating a surface, there has to be others, perhaps even a large number of these pots and with any luck, the next one that shows up (especially a chawan) will end up in a small town in central New York State.