NO NONSENSE

I had this teabowl with me, on the desk the other day, late at night looking it over and studying the form, surface and foot and when I turned it over, I decided to take this quick and impromptu photo. As you can see, this kodai is the absolute definition of no nonsense, the basic meat and potatoes executed in rather quick, crisp and clean cuts making for a purposeful and effective foot. Truthfully, the entire piece from mouth, form and foot are all rather simply thrown and conceived out of a rather pleasant, off white stoneware clay instead allowing the semi-exotic machinations of the "shark-skin Shino" to become the focus of the chawan. Robust in scale and nature this chawan by Kato Yoshiaki, a Tokoname potter is a tactile tour de force with every turn of the bowl bringing even more texture filling the senses and despite its simple, almost perfunctory form it is quite a visual handful imbued with purpose and sincerity. As you look at the kodai and its crisp cuts, the wider base fits the strength of the form and creates a definite stability that sets both user and viewer at ease. The sharp tool marks around the exterior and interior of the bowl remind me of some ancient, Neolithic designs, devices that everyone can easily relate to on a chawan that is as much about pleasing all of the senses as it is about bringing the mind along for a journey the is filled with function and ceremony.

BY WAY OF NH

I have had this covered jar up on the top shelf of my storage shelves since they were built all the way back in New Hampshire. To be honest, I didn't keep it because I thought it was some stellar example but rather to remind me of trying to be flexible and as adaptable as possible. Neither the clay or glazes were something that I had ever used before but I was invited to work with another potter and this pot and several others were the results. If I remember correctly, the stoneware clay body came from Sheffield Pottery in Western Massachusetts and the white glaze was a Val Cushing oxidation white glaze with the decoration being purely my own thing, I took the leap and just mixed up three different colors normally used with my majolica hoping they would work out okay. As you can see in the photos, the colors worked rather well over the frosty white glaze that has hints of titanium crystals and the cobalt speckling from the firing further adding to the surface. As I said, not my clay, not my glaze but I did my best working with unfamiliar materials and for just winging it I can't say I wasn't totally displeased that it didn't end up some horrendous mess. Now every time  my wife confronts me in the studio for not being very flexible or adaptable I just reach back and point to this covered jar which illustrates my point by way of New Hampshire.

CARPE MOMENTUM*

Though we knew the weather was going to turn today, there was a brief moment of bright sun and 70 degree temperatures this afternoon and in that window, I was able to take this rather attractive detail shot of this gosu and tessha iron interaction. In normal incandescent light though still a rather nice piece and surface many of these subtle and not so subtle details fail to register to the eye where the sun has amplified the surface and wrung each and every variable out of the various glazes to the very fullest. This particular henko was made by Kawai Kanjiro student, Kawai Hisashi and is both typical of his surfaces and classic in his creation of forms following in the master's footsteps. I am particularly enthralled by the boundaries between the tessha and gosu and how they interact along with the areas where the glazes have started to run down the piece creating exotic stripes surrounded by vivid iron crystals across the surface. There is a cosmic system on the surface of this pot and honestly at 4.37 light years away, quite a bit closer than Alpha Centauri and much easier to see.

(*For clarification sake I should mention that I studied very basic latin back in grade school so admittedly I don't necessarily get things quite right and hope the meaning is not lost in translation. Paenitet.)

RARA AVIS 05.11.2020

This post like some others is not exactly pottery related but I will mention the word pottery* so that will have to suffice and I suspect there may be some interest in such a rara avis. On Monday I spent the afternoon in the studio cleaning up, working on organizing, getting some dry batches made of the Oribe glaze and temmoku and getting some test pods and slabs made for an upcoming firing and by the time I was done it was around 5:40pm. As I came up from the studio I looked out the back bedroom window and saw a large, dark form which I assumed was a buzzard which are local to the area and commonly seen and on a whim decided to grab the camera and take a picture of it out in the freshly plowed field.

Once I got the camera in focus I was quite shocked, it wasn't at all what I thought, it was a Bald Eagle(Haliaeetus Ieucocephalus) of all things just standing guard out back buffeted by some cold spring winds. He stayed put for about five minutes or so while all the local crows were aghast at his nerve invading their sole territory and just like that he flew off. It may not sound like much of an encounter but since we have lived here, we have made three sightings of bald eagles, the other two out soaring over the Mohawk River down in the valley just south of our house and these sightings  are a bit rare.

I should mention that while living in CT we had a really up close encounter with a bald eagle as it landed on our back deck, just outside the kitchen sliding doors with some limp brown thing in its talons. This encounter was not photographed but the eagle left talon marks in the wood of the railing around the deck. As I said this is not exactly pottery related but I thought it pottery adjacent enough to post up a picture of a grand symbol of our country.

(* I did manage to mention pottery three different times and hope that will make all right with the world.)

P&E

Illustrated is a temmoku and medieval green vase that started out life as a somewhat thick walled cylinder and then was vigorously paddled and then expanded to its current form and the flange mouth thrown in as the last detail of the pot. I have finished forms and then paddled them afterward but have found that the finished product has two distinct looks once finished and fired. The paddled and expanded pot is or would seem to be far more controllable in terms of the finished piece and paddling the form once completely thrown tends to alter it in ways that are sometimes a bit unexpected. I like both methods and continue to use the technique of paddling before and after but in this case wanting the flange style mouth to come out quite perfectly without any irregularities was best achieved by throwing the cylinder, paddling and expanding the form to the finished ideal. In the end if I never mentioned the who, what where and when, I doubt anyone would be any the wiser, or would they?

AS LONG AS I AM AT IT

Every now and again I get a group of Japanese exhibition catalogue, either ones I have bought from a particular book dealer in Tokyo or those that a friend and book collector sends my way while he is in Japan. Most of these come by sea mail and can take some time to get here and in one of these groups from some time back I received two Yamato Yasuo exhibition catalogues and I figured as long as I am at it, I may just as well share another wild and fissured dai-kannyu Hagi chawan. Obviously differing from the other illustrations, this chawan has a more classic, formal shape, painted in a variety of softer, earthy hues with mostly smaller fissures under a milky white glaze that makes for a rather somber and lonely feeling, like snow covered ice beginning to crack under the (unwanted) attention of the sun. However you see this or interpret the horizontal narrative there is a poetic and lyrical quality to this chawan that pulls in the viewer and is likely not to lessen its grip for some time to come.

"In winter with warm tears I'll melt the snow, And keep eternal spring-time on thy face." Shakespeare (Titus Andronicus)

THE WAY

Illustrated is a detail shot of a large Iga henko form by Kojima Kenji, a piece that was both exhibited and illustrated in a catalogue from November of 2017. Besides showing off the wonderful effects created during the firing, the simple and expertly crafted neck and mouth define the pot, add purpose to the form and show the way both in and the way out. There is a classic quality to the way the opening was formed that also creates a sense of mystery of volume, purpose and emptiness, I find these characteristics quite attractive in a pot adding layers of depth to the obvious qualities that immediately meet the eye. It is quite possible to get trapped in endless speculation regarding the vast, empty space being defined by the physical constraints of the pot and this added dimension imbues greater significance to the clay skeleton.

Aside from all of the contemplative characteristics, the neck and mouth of this pot seem to be a classic element of Kojima Kenji's work being seen on a number of his organic and geometric forms. The mouth is just perfect in execution and without fail fits the form to a T, neither too big, nor too small with just the right amount of depression around the mouth to fill to the brim with ash and create a rather stunning visual and metaphoric statement. I honestly think it will take some time to find a better use of geometry that is in play here, as Kojima has managed to wrest poetry out of geometry while defying both the ferocity of fire and unyielding laws of gravity. Well done!

AS LUCK WOULD HAVE IT

Now and again I get an inquiry for somewhat specific pieces of pottery that take just a bit extra to get the job done. I was recently asked if I had a vase like one that they had seen but in a different glaze and as luck would have it, I actually had a vase almost identical and in medieval green instead of the saffron yellow glaze and as you can see it is a simple waisted 10" vase with hakeme slip decoration under the glaze. I cleaned the piece up as the shelves can get a bit dusty and sent out a photo a few hours later but the customer was just not sure if it would work for them. In their reply they asked if I could put flowers in the vase and since I have a few artificial ones on hand I made up a quick display and sent them this composite photo. It must have done the trick and I packed up and shipped out the vase minus the flowers. I remember thinking it was a really good thing they didn't want a photo of a plate or tray with a cheese danish on it or it may have disappeared long before the pictures were taken.

"Luck is where opportunity meets preparation."  Seneca

DAIJOUBU DESU

I reached out to Kohyama Yasuhisa a short while back wanting to make sure everything was fine on his end and received an email back the next morning. All was fine and Sensei was getting ready, making work toward a firing possibly this month for a show in July. It was comforting to know that things were just daijoubu there and he was still cutting clay as it were. I have a lot of extremely fond memories of my time in Asanomiya from picking large stones out of clay to being lucky enough to help stoke the kiln during the firing of the anagama and it still seems like just the other day.

I took this photo of Kohyama Yasuhisa while he was loading his anagama for the firing I was there for. I had been involved in wood firings before this but this was a very careful and methodical process of getting the exact right pieces in the exact right places with gaps and spaces so well thought out that you may have sworn he was following a plan some engineer had come up with based on the exact volume and dimensions of the kiln interior, the selected group of pots to fire and the type and amount of each wood to be used. I know that I use the terms happenstance and serendipity when describing wood firing and they certainly do have their place but there is a science born of experience and intuition that ultimately gets the job done and Kohyama is that calculator.

IRON UNDER GLASS

Thrown and then manipulated and even pinched, this buffware chawan was made by perhaps my favorite Fudo painter, Sato Katsuhiko. As I mentioned the bowl is made of a off white, buff stoneware and then calligraphy was brushed around the surface using a rusty iron wash which has areas of semi-translucent to opaque qualities that brings the eye round and round the bowl. Before firing the teabowl was glazed in a thin clear glaze that accentuates both the clay and decoration which makes for a rather appealing overall presentation like iron floating under a thin layer of glass.  Living and working in Nara Prefecture, Sato Katsuhiko began learning pottery making under Tsujimura Shiro in 1974 and over the years he has created a wide array of works and styles from Bizen style wood fired pots to painted overglaze enamel pottery, sometsuke ware and many others including this shoga style chawan. Though I don't exactly consider Sato a great potter it is rather clear that he gets his message across in the works that he throws himself as is the case with this chawan, for some of the other heavy lifting he has had more accomplished potters step in and create pots that where clay act as his canvas for ideas that flow out of two dimensions and sometimes in to three. I know I have used the Clint Eastwood quote before but it is true that "a man has to know his limitations" and in this case, it is possible that Sato Katsuhiko may have exceeded them.