120. Modernist, wood-fired, Shino-glazed chawan, ca. 1960s

120. Modernist, wood-fired, Shino-glazed chawan, ca. 1960s

 

This was part of the estate of the late Carole Armstrong, an American potter who studied in Japan in the early 1960s. According to her family, she studied under a living national treasure but they were unable to supply the teacher’s name to the proprietor of the shop that bought Armstrong’s pottery collection for resale. The absence of any identifying marks on the piece likely indicates that it was made by Armstrong herself or a fellow student or worker at her teacher’s studio.

Gray clay, Shino glaze with significant carbon capture, resulting in gray, red, and black colors; base of foot ring left unglazed. Weight: 234 g (8 oz). Rim dimensions (a rough oval): 11 x 9.5 cm (4-3/8 x 3-3/4 in); foot ring diameter: 4.7 cm (1-7/8 in). Height: 8.7 cm (3-1/2 in).

This sits directly on the base of the foot ring. The exterior of the foot ring is about 1 cm (3/8 in) high; the interior of the base was hollowed out to about half that distance. The lower portion of the pot (about 5 cm or 2 in high) appears to have been shaped on a wheel, in the form of a small bowl and then altered into an oval about approximately 9 x 10 cm (3-5/8 x 4 in) at the top. The upper portion of the walls of the pot was formed from an irregular strip of clay, which was wound around the rim of the lower portion. The edges of this strip were joined to the lower portion, both on the interior and on the exterior, using a tool that left a series of short vertical lines at the seams, as were the overlapping edges of the strip itself. At times these seams look almost like the rows of marks left by surgical staples. In addition, rectangular strips of clay were attached to the lower portion of the body on the exterior at three places around the body of the pot. At a few points along the exterior vertical lines were gouged into the surface of the exterior. A series of similar lines in a crisscross pattern was gouged onto the lower portion of the walls along one side of the interior (visible in the last photo). The texture of the surface varies from quite finished and smooth to quite rough and uneven.

The interior and exterior, with the exception of the base of the foot ring were covered with a Shino glaze. During the firing the interior of the pot, the base, and a few random sections of the exterior acquired the “scorched” red coloring characteristic of this glaze. This was wood-fired, and there was significant carbon capture by the glaze during the firing, so much so that the red became a dark salmon color and what would ordinarily be the white Shino color was colored gray. (The first four pictures show the color more accurately than the others.) There are several places, particularly along the rim and the vertical lines gouged into the exterior and interior walls, that had so much carbon deposited that they became black. The surface also exhibits the pinholes characteristic of this glaze.

This was labeled a “chawan” (teabowl), but it’s doubtful one could drink out of this without dribbling. To say the least, it is unusual both in shape and in coloration. It wasn’t meant to be functional or beautiful in a conventional sense. It would be misleading even to call it decorative. It is intriguing and thought-provoking, more than reason enough to create such an object. The intransigent clay at its brutish, lumpish best.

Purchased in June 2012 from Ver Sacrum Studio.