LEVELS OF INFLUENCE

Back in 1984, I was fortunate to see a wonderful Japanese calligraphy exhibition entitled;  WORDS IN MOTION; Modern Japanese Calligraphy. At the time I was just out of college and profoundly interested in ink, clay and steel and as such this exhibition really opened my eyes to the modern calligraphy tradition in Japan. In the exhibition there was several pieces of calligraphy that I was captivated with as well as the poem that it represented, the calligrapher was Yanagida Taiun and the poem was HAN SHAN (Cold Mountain, both a place and an enigmatic poet). At the time I was unaware of the profound affect and levels of influence that the lyrical and highly animated calligraphy would have on me but over the years it constantly makes its way back in to the decoration of my work.    This stoneware teabowl is one the first times that I have used the influences of Yanagida's calligraphy in slip trailing but thought to give it a try using black slip as a backdrop and white slip trailed over as decoration I think it certainly has movement and character for a first attempt. Once bisque I used a thin wash of my saffron iron over a clear glaze to give the piece a soft droozy appearance as if the surface is moving and melting. I rarely title my work but thought that this reminds me of late winter, early spring and decided to call it; "Waiting For The Ice To Melt" and in the end I suspect there are hints of Yanagida and even Michael Cardew that one can spot in the bowls origins if you care to look hard enough.  

Just for reference, the second illustration is a small section of calligraphy by Yanagida Taiun from his rendition of the HAN SHAN poem. This shoga is as lyrical, animated and yes poetic as any I have ever seen and I am certain I am not the only person to have been influenced by the encounter with his work.

GET OUT YOUR BOOK

Illustrated is an organic Shino mentori chawan by Kowari Tetsuya. Though probably best known for his monumental Oribe sculpture and casual chadogu, Kowari's Shino pots have wonderfully diverse landscapes only heightened by the random and spirited facets around the ever so slightly pushed oval form. Beyond the highlighted lines from the faceting perhaps what I really like about the chawan is the rich engaging quality of the undulating lip carefully cut, manipulated and softened that is also glazed to good effect with tones of deep iron and an almost iridescent copper-bronze color of the reduced Shino glaze. Admittedly I have not handled this chawan as the photo was sent to me by Kowari-san but just from the image it makes me want to touch the translucent and satiny texture and to hold the inviting and tactile form in my hands. From the beginning Kowari's work immediately won me over with his forms and creative use of Oribe but now seeing more of his Shino pottery you should definitely "get out your book*" and add this at your earliest opportunity. 

(*That is a QUIET MAN  reference in case you missed it.)

A HIGH BAR

I have had a fairly long time to think, to reflect on what it is that really interests me regarding teabowls and after all this time one factor that keeps popping up is the posture or attitude of the piece. Perhaps the chawan that best defines my interests is the famous MINE (NO) MOMIJI a product of the Mutabora-gama during the Momoyama era at home in the Gotoh Museum. To my eye, this chawan can be mainly distilled to posture, the way it rests on its kodai and lifts to the main part of the bowl that is like a form moving gently in the wind, animated by the masterful way the potter manipulated the clay and formed a wonky narrative that through the devices decorating the surface and the glaze texture bring this bowl to life. The Mine (no) Momiji chawan has an unconscious character that stems from form's posture all coalesced through the act of throwing clay and firing it centuries ago.    

As I have mentioned before in my blog is that from my perspective, there is no finer chawan than the Mine (no) Momiji but it is from this chawan that I see quite a disparate array of bowls that have attributes that are rooted back to this  Momoyama archetype. As is probably easy to see, this wonderful, even playful Kakurezaki Ryuichi Bizen chawan owes a bit to its 16th century predecessor in the posture and animation of the form set atop an unusual but purposeful kodai. Defined by dramatic lift, this undulating form has a  distinct sense of balance despite the visual turbulence that it portrays. Complete with an excellent Bizen firing which has created a number of variations that help define the lines of the bowl includes a broad, shimmering coating of ash in the bowls interior that appears just like a minimalist's abstract painting. The more I look at this Bizen chawan the more I can spot little hints that harkens back to feudal archetypes including the organic nature of the piece and the lack of any overt contrived manipulation which are probably the qualities that best describe the Mine (no) Momiji  and that certainly is a high bar to achieve.

HOPE & TESTING

I hate putting too much hope on tests as they escalate in scale but this is one of those, surely hope it works pieces. I have put my new glaze through its paces on pods, slabs and two test cups and am now moving on to a good size teabowl for the next phase of the testing process. This all started back at the end of last year with a simple query regarding a Hagi style surface to which I responded that in the past, most all the testing avenues had ended rather poorly but since I am a sucker for punishment I would give it another try. Rather than start from square one, I took an existing glaze that I have and altered it and am using it sparingly thin on the surface to allow all of the clay texture, marks and sand to show through the glaze. This particular attempt on a yunomi sized pot is not based on the traditional Hagi surface but rather the white style surfaces made popular by the Miwa family though instead of being thick and curdled, this is intended to be rather thin and almost translucent allowing the clay texture to be part of the surface. I am just at the beginning of a cycle and time will tell, if you never see any result you can guess the outcome.   

Though hope is not a testing strategy I am constantly reminded when dealing with anything in life; " Sperare optima Parare pessima Expectare inexpectata* ". ("Hope for the best, Prepare for the worst, Expect the unexpected".)

IN TOTO

If you read my blog, it is hard to miss the fact that I really enjoy good Oribe pots only slightly behind Oni-Shino and wood fired pieces and in looking at this detail shot, it is safe to say this is good Oribe where the thick glaze and bidoro are related by fire. Illustrated is a close-up of the mouth of a Tsukamoto Haruhiko bottle vase where the glaze acts as a luscious skin to the feldspar and sand rich clay and where the Oribe has pooled and built up there are areas of outstanding richness that  could fascinate for a lifetime and then some. With the right light, the thick accumulation fluctuates between deep green and soft brown tones like lapping waves and looking a bit like it was created deep in the bowels of  the earth over millions of years, producing these gems that rest so casually on the furrowed surface of the lip. Hyperbole perhaps but there are times when objects speak loudly and that is certainly the case with this provocative detail where the piece in toto certainly does not disappoint.

IMPACT II

Quite some time back I put up a post entitled IMPACT showing off the velocity and ferocity on a large Shigaraki tsubo and promptly forgot about putting up an overall of the pot until now. This large and very well fired Shigaraki tsubo was made by Takahashi Shunsai using the coil and throw method and honestly has the presence of a pot much older that it is as if it finds its origins in the simple and direct Sue wares that proceeded many of the modern rokkoyo, the six ancient kilns. It is rather obvious what direction this tsubo was facing in the kiln and the wonderful tendrils of one time liquid ash try their best to reach around the fullness of the form but fall short yet paint a wonderful narrative of their efforts. With the front 60% covered in ash and the remainder in a rich, wet hi-iro, the pot has a stellar sense of softness and movement that makes for a rather captivating use of volume and space that can be broken down in to honesty and simplicity and letting the firing speak as loudly as the undecorated form.

WRONG HAND, WRONG CLAY

When it comes to slip trailing, the bulk of my work is done on terra cotta using black and white slips, though other colors do occasionally come in to play. It has been a rather long time since I have slip trailed either stoneware or porcelain but over the past year of so I have been sneaking a few pieces in to the kiln now and again as both tests for glaze surfaces but also working out various design or decoration ideas. The illustrated bowl was fired recently and was thrown out of stoneware, black slipped and then had white slip trailed over the surface. Now here is where the difference comes to play, I am a natural left hander and write, paint and slip trail with my left hand, in this particular set of bowls I used my right hand to create a more spontaneous and less controlled look and if nothing else I think I succeeded in what I was after. I used a combination of a clear glaze with a very thin layer of saffron iron over the piece to get this slightly amber and runny looking appearance. I like the motion of the slip and surface working together and think that this isn't too bad an attempt using the wrong hand and the wrong clay and temperature range. There is another teabowl from this slight deviation which is firing now and hopefully it will turn out as well though it is quite a bit difference in approach and influences. Time and temperature will tell.

PHOTOGRAPHIC DISCREPANCY

I thought this made for quite an interesting picture, one that could spark a certain amount of conversation about what a thing looks like and one's expectation or perception of it based on a photographic image. Though I posted a photo of this Iga vase by Kishimoto Kennin quite some time ago I thought it worth revisiting since an exhibition catalogue featuring the same piece had surfaced and made for some interesting comparisons and some degree of photographic discrepancy. What is immediately apparent is how radically different the color scheme is from left to right and though a photo of a photo, the exhibition picture just lacks any spark or life where the one on the right has a richness and movement showcasing the cascading ash as gravity and heat took over during the intensity of the firing. As I survey the catalogue photo with my older picture, circa 2012, it is almost as if these are not the same pot, rather one being a distilled , diluted version of the real thing where approximation was more than enough when illustrated. One thing I can tell you having seen the pot in person is that as different as these two pictures appear, the same can be said when viewing the pot in hand though that is not always the case where a skilled photographer can make a lesser pot looks so much more. In the end and to be clear, I am not trying to disparage the catalogue system and photographer but rather to point out that you can't always judge a book by its cover or a pot by its photograph.  

"If the doors of perception were cleansed everything would appear to man as it is, infinite."  William Blake

IN ARCA AUTEM NON EST HINC

Over the years of being around Japanese pottery, the topic of signed wood boxes seems to be a constant discussion likening pots without boxes to the undesirables from the Island of Lost Toys. Though I am an absolute believer that if at all possible a pot should have its original signed box or an attested one, I have long ago concluded that at the core, I collect pots and the boxes are secondary, a necessary evil if you will. For those that have been around collecting off of a specific ubiquitous auction site, the early days was filled with unboxed, unidentified pots ranging from semi-commercial all the way to Okabe Mineo, Hamada Shoji, Kawai Kanjiro and even Rosanjin and trust me, few collectors I know were going to let the lack of a box stop them from bidding.     

How I got on this topic was a recent purchase I made, a rather affordable but unboxed Iga hanaire (Yama-Iga) made by Furutani Michio. As you can see in the photo, this vase is patterned after a classic early Iga archetype with wonderfully gestural marks and lugs creating a somewhat whimsical pot with the addition of a nice firing and ash to wet the surface and move especially through the incised markings made by the potter. At the very first glance, this is a classic Furutani Michio pot from form and posture to the maker's marks and the firing and I think few would need a box to inform them of its creator. I guess my real point is box or no box there are some pots that easily make that decision a no-brainer.

15 MINUTES OR SO

Every now and again I like to take some amount of clay and make something from start to finish (well tooled and greenware) and in this case I choose 2.5lbs of the sandy stoneware clay I had recently mixed up from scratch. Truth be told, the actual time according to my clay encrusted and nearly impossible to read studio stopwatch read just shy of 22 minutes, but who is counting and here is the finished pot. The idea from this came from a machinery video on Youtube where this large square die then stepped down into a smaller, tapered square and was stamping out square copper planter liners at a billion an hour. 

I went with this idea, threw the form, squared out the top, bowl portion and rasped and stamped it for interesting texture before addressing the foot/ base. Using a wire, I roughed out the base and then rasped it to a slightly tapered conclusion before tooling out the interior. There is absolutely nothing perfect about this piece but that was not my end goal, even with the lines a little adrift, I think the idea is sound and maybe if I actually made a series and took my time, who knows how this idea may come out or morph in to something else. The bottom line is that with some classic 80s remixes playing and the bulk of my next two terra cotta kiln loads now finished and drying, it was enjoyable to just take some time to play in the clay.