RIN

Illustrated is a finely thrown and carved porcelain vase with a pale seihakuji glaze surface influenced by Chinese Song ceramics by Kurashima Taizan of the Daizan-gama. Working in Sue located in Fukuoka, the pottery of the Kurashima family is known as Sue-yaki and as mentioned and looks to both Chinese ceramics and Arita ware for its initial inspiration. This tsubo like hanaire was expertly thrown and is thin and light yet the procelain has been fired to create a dense and hard clay that rings finely when tapped. The mouth and shoulder area has been exquisitely carved to create a five  lotus leaf design to harmonize with the rinka style mouth all under the thin coating of a simple, elegant blue tinted glaze that highlights the form.    

Kurashima Taizan is well known for his wonderful, Song inspired ceramics and carving that runs from rather simple to very ornate and complex. As you can see in this simple, static photo, this vase embraces the concept of "RIN" or "quiet clarity" and his work was included in the exhibition, RIN (1996) showcasing his pale blue and ivory colored carved porcelains. As the accompanying catalogue details, Kurashima's works conjure up thoughts of purity and elegance and having handled a few of his pieces, it would be next to impossible to disagree with that conclusion.

MORE TO OFFER

Illustrated is a Shigaraki tsubo made by a Fukuoka native now working and firing in Yokohama which coincidentally,  is only about a four hour trainride from the cradle of this ideal and aesthetic. Made by Hoshino Ryosai, this medieval style tsubo with a vivid and classic  incised  fence decoration has a simple form with crisp lines to form the mouth and flange with a wonderful coat of ash from top to bottom presenting a true sense of antiquity and honesty to the pot. What is clear to see is the varying ash formation and color that has painted this pot ranging from tradition browns and greens to hints of lavender and blue strewn across the surface.     

Having shown his work across Japan and abroad, Hoshino has embraced the Shigaraki (haikaburi) aesthetic that relies on skill, experience and serendipity to complete his work in the anagama wood fired kiln. This pot, all naturally glazed, shizen-yu has a rough and tumble surface while still having a sense of nobility in the stance and posture of what is a utilitarian vessel with quite honestly, so much more to offer. Each encounter with the work of Hoshino expands the breathe of his output from simple to the complex masterful koro showing yet another potter not residing in the birthplace of the tradition making pots that display excellent examples of what is at the very heart of the Shigaraki tradition.

MOTIVATION

I finally got motivated to sand, decorate and load a number of greenware pieces into a bisque yesterday and another one today. I total there are about 140 pieces ranging from teabowls to dinnerplates and pasta bowls, some orders, commissions and pieces I made as tests or new forms. The truth is the real motivation to get these pieces fired was the weather as we are in the midst of cold, cold rain which is supposed to ice up and with ice comes downed trees and power outages. Since I won't be throwing I can get three glazes made and two topped off and get around to glazing by Friday as I have some other commitments tomorrow and Monday. It is funny how the weather finally gave me the kick in the but to stop throwing and get stuff processed before there was a mishap as storing all that greenware was getting tricky. Illustrated is just a group of carved slip porcelain bowls about 9" across ready to be cleaned and then glazed in either my Oribe, amber or soda blue, there are also combed stoneware slipbowls, some chatterware and a few teabowls meant as filler in the periphery of the picture. Now that the second bisque is finished firing without any power interuptions I am rather glad to have these pots in a more stable situation but I still need to figure out where to store them while I am glazing everything up, the pitfalls of a car garage studio and limited wall space.

TRICKY BOWL

I realize that I have posted this Tsukigata Nahiko chawan before but I ran across this picture of the bowl highlighted by both sunlight and shadow and thought I might as well give it one more go. I think this is a tricky bowl to decipher when loooking at it in a more convential setting, the quality of the glaze, the posture and overall feel of the form can easily get lost or become just a bit fuzzy. I am not trying to paint this as the end-all of Tsukigata chawan but rahter it has some rather special attribute which are best observed under a variety of light soruces and situations, the more you can see and converse with a piece or this piece specifically the more you get to understand it at its core from the bones to the toppings.  

As for my personal take on this chawan, this has been one of my favorites that I have handled by Tsukigata Nahiko. I am unsure exactly how to explain it but it has a sense of antiquity and an eminently casual demeanor, more like it just happened than was thought out, thrown, manipulated and tooled. The bowl feels natural, well balanced on its pedestal foot and welcoming in the hands, I am not sure you get all of this from this photos and others, along with a video that I have made but since it is rather happy where it is, as is the owner, I don't think it will be making the rounds any time soon so this will just have to suffice until another one shows up, fingers crossed.

STRIKE A POSE

I have to admit, I have handled more chaire by Honiwa Rakunyu II than probably any other modern potter. Rakunyu II must have been rather prolific in regards to chaire and unlike every other potter I have visited in Shigaraki (and Iga) at most they may have had one or two chaire on display, but at the Honiwa home there were eight or nine and even at the time I found this just a bit curious. Along side many of the chaire were two distinct types of shifuku bags, those of fancy, historic textile patterns and the simple honest and almost mingei style homespun made by his daughter, those bags have always been our favorites.     

Illustrated is an ever so slightly different piece by Honiwa Rakunyu, a tall, slender and graceful Shigaraki hoso-chaire with a Kyoto style textile shifuku and a well crafted and excellently fitted lid. This slender form was likely fired inbetween two pots, slightly behind them as the face is covered in a fine, wet coating of ash that feathers off to the rear that is a darker brown hi-iro that is surrounded by a thin transitional border of an almost goma-like effect. At over 11.5cm tall this is a simple, resolute form intended for one dedicated purpose but the more I look at it the more I see that it serves as much for the eye as it does the hand and in this light strikes a distinct and timeless pose.

SOLVING PROBLEMS

When working with stoneware and porcelain, I don't think it is that I get bored easily but rather that I like to make new forms and when necessary solve new problems. This Kuro-Oribe thrown and altered cap jar was for me a new form and solved the small problem of keeping several areas of the pot round while squaring up other parts, namely the top and bottom of the form. I have actually used this technique quite a bit over the years but normally on a closed form but in this case I needed to work to alter the form and keep the waist and mouth round which actually proved to be rather easy as I got to work. 

Once the form was fixed, I beat the base so that the center of each plane formed the foot and the corners were a bit raised which makes for a nice shadow. Small paddled lugs were added at the shoulder and the lid has a step down which adds dimension to the surface along with the glaze run that also adds quite a bit of motion. The shoulder and upper plane had iron sprayed on them but the bottom of the form is just pure, straight Oribe and looks quite radiant and enticing in the sunlight. My goal this year is to make some larger versions of this idea along with varying the proprotion to see what I end up with and even after making some small bottles and a few covered jar I think I am safe in saying, I don't think I will get bored with solving problems or this idea and form anytime soon.

ODD ENCOUNTER

I vividly remember my first encounter with the work of Kotoge Katsuyoshi (Tanzan), we were in Kyoto in the early 90s and walked in to a gallery that had a myriad of his highly decorative pieces of Kyo-yaki on display, perhaps 30 pieces or so though mostly chawan, mizusashi, cha-tsubo and a few hanaire. There were precise, meticulous and everything one would want from Kyo-yaki but truth be told, just not our taste. When we left the gallery we went and had a beverage and pastry at a shop located next to another gallery that really caught my eye. In the window was a rather formal but very well fired Shigaraki vase right next to an Iga mizusashi literally covered in ash from head to toe and front to back, an utsushimono of a 17th century piece. When we went in there were seven or eight more piece all by the same potter, Kotoge Katsuyoshi! What I went on to learn is that Kotoge had studied with two rather high profile potters, Shimaoka Tatsuzo and Miyagawa Makuzu Kosai V given him a tremendous exposure to two very different styles of work and techniques geared to fanciful Kyo-yaki and rugged wood fired pottery. Besides having a deep immersion into the woodfired pottery in Mashiko under Shimaoka, Miyagawa Kosai V was actually known for having made some Shigaraki style fired pottery from which Kotoge would have had been exposed to during his apprenticeship.      

I should also mention that if Kyo-yaki, Shigaraki and Iga pottery was not enough for his repertoire, Kotoge Katsuyoshi is also rather well known for his simple and unpretentious Karatsu ware that focuses on chadogu, pieces used for chanoyu which he has practiced for over four decades. In an interview done while exhibiting in Spain in 2013-2014 Kotoge went on to explain that and I am only paraphrasing; most potters who create (or make) chawan rarely know the difference in spirit between a food bowl and a true chawan.  This is a subject that comes up quite frequently I must admit, where scholars, authors, tea experts and the like hold this continued opinion.     

Illustrated is a pot, a seemingly odd encounter that got me to this post in the first place, a classic Iga style mizusashi made by Kotoge Tanzan (Katsuyoshi) in 1990, the year of our first trip to Japan. As you can see in the picture, the entire surface of the pot is covered in a nice, glassy coating of ash though the other side also has a good amount of charring and charcoal like effect  as well, but what is really intriguing is that though very much based on an early Iga pot, this form has a sense of refinement that shows off his classical Kyoto, Kyo-yaki roots. The dichotomy of blending both Iga and Kyoto aesthetics makes for a rather idiosyncratic form which is easy to expect from Kotoge and his background in wood firing and Kyo-yaki. I think that even all these years later it is still a bit of a shock every time I see these rustic, wood fired pots from the hand of Kotoge Tanzan but having seen so many of his pots since my first encounter it makes all the sense in the world how his work would be so very different yet exactly the same.

CONTINUITY

On the left is a picture I have used on my blog previously of a well articulated and decorated henko form by Kimura Ichiro and a short while back the henko on the right was put up on Instagram, this one being by Kimura Mitsuru. To recap, Mitsuru was the son-in-law of Kimura Ichiro and as such he learned about his working first hand in his studio, making, glazing and firing. At first glance or in passing these two forms like alike but if you study the proportions, depth and angles they are ever so slightly different from one to the other. I suspect Mitsuru made this homage henko as a means of creating continuity from studio to studio as well as keeping alive a tradition which Ichiro inherited by way of Hamada Shoji and that Mitsuru inherited from his father-in-law.     

The use of common forms within families is almost as old as ceramics itself and is one of the underlying factors of what builds a school, style or tradition. In this particular case, Kimura Mitsuru used the basic three dimensional canvas of the henko along with glazes perfected by Ichiro and decoration that would be recognizable as that of the Ichiro family. The use of the creamy nuka with its abundance of texture brings depth to a form already well versed in dimension that clearly narrates a story about Mashiko, Hamada, Kimura Ichiro and its inheritor, Kimura Mitsuru.  (Photo used with the kind permission of 20thCenturyARTophiles)

LASTING IMPRESSION

Ilustrated is a graceful, four sided henko hanaire by Mukunoki Eizo. I guess I should say that this is graceful for mingei pottery but it does have that stoic sense and posture about it with soft and crisp lines defing the pot that is decked out in a slightly mottled shinsha red glaze with spots of almost apple green jade coloring scattered about the base and elsewhere. I think it is rather clear to see what a lasting impression that studying with Kawai Kanjiro had on Mukunoki Eizo where he made note of the lines, proportions and posture of the masters work and tried to infuse them in his own unique forms. Despite the genesis for Mukunoki's forms and surfaces coming from the Kawai-mon, he was able to chart a course that distinguishes itself from Kanjiro whose forms seems to be more dominated by sturdy and compact geometry while this pot reaches for the vertical and has a lighter profile and volume. Another aspect of this vase that I enjoy is the sense of purpose it displays, this vase was made to use, its primary concern is function with the aesthetics of form and surface perhaps seperated by just nano-seconds in consideration. The ideal was sculpted over time by the potter before a multi-part mold was made to cement the form into reality, so no small amount of planning and consideration went into the original design, mold and the final object and I think that is on display in this classic shinsha form.

LONE SURVIVOR

Remembering that Mondays are normally referenced as Mugshot Mondays, I pulled down this old mug and decided to take a quick picture of it. I know I have mentioned that I don't tend to make a lot of mugs but there is a back story to this particular mug. Back when I was teaching at Wesleyan potters, one of my classes was teens and toward the end of the session I made a dozen mugs, glazed each one differently and then let the students each pick one to take home, I had 11 students and this was the lone survivor that no one seemed interested in and so here it is, dusted off and photographed nearly 20 years later!