204. SEN Sōsa VI, 1675­-1730), chawan (teabowl)

204. SEN Sōsa (千宗左) VI, religious names: Gensō Sōsa  原叟宗左  and  Kakkakusai   覚々斎, 1675­-1730, chawan (teabowl)

Gensō  Sōsa, the son of Hisada Sōei, was the sixth head of the Omotesenke (表千家) school of tea ceremony. He was an amateur potter. He served Tokugawa Yoshimune  (1684-1751), the eighth Tokugawa shogun, who ruled from 1716 until his abdication in 1745.

Gray sandy clay from Shigaraki. The interior and the upper parts of the exterior walls have a thick black glaze. The remainder of the exterior is unglazed. Weight: 1178 g (2.6 lb). Height: 8.8 cm (3-1/2 in). Diameter: rim, 10.4 cm (4-1/8 in). maximum, 13.2 cm (5-1/4 in); base, 11.3 cm (4-1/2 in).

This was shaped by hand. It sits on a very shallow foot ring, less than 0.3 cm (1/16 in) high; the shape is an irregular circle roughly 3.8 cm (1-1/2 in) in diameter. A shallow ring was hollowed out, leaving the center level with the edges of the ring. The ring sits in the center of the flat base. There are two inscriptions on the base (see below). Above the base the walls rise in a convex arc to the rim. The walls were flattened using a bamboo spatula and randomly gouged and pitted. There is a long, deep crack in one side—perhaps the result of the clay drying unevenly and splitting open. The rim is rounded and very irregular both in shape and height. The thick layer of glaze on the interior created a smoother surface, but it is still bumpy.

This was given a coating of thick black glaze on the interior and rim, with some flow down the exterior side. The rest of the exterior was left unglazed and exposed to the ash and heat flow from the wood-firing. The exterior is also much weathered.

There are two inscriptions on the base of the bowl. The first, enclosed in a rectangular cartouche reads  不二コ fujiko, which I take to mean something like “unmatched,” “nonpareil,” “nonesuch,” “nothing like it.” These characters for “fuji” are also occasionally used for Mount Fuji; if that is the intent here, the name would mean “child of Mount Fuji.” I regard this as less likely, since nothing in the shape or decoration of the bowl suggests Mount Fuji. (Later: I ran across a sake cup with a black and white color scheme--in that instance with the white around the rim and the black lower--with 不二山 Fujisan, "Mount Fuji" written on the box as the name of the cup.) The other inscription was written in a quite good hand and reads 信楽砂土造 Shigaraki shato zō, or “made from sandy clay from Shigaraki.”  Shigaraki is a long-standing potting site in Shiga prefecture, next to Lake Biwa, east of Kyoto.

This came in a box without an inscription. 

The seller attributed this to Gensō Sōsa.

Regardless of the authenticity of the ascription to Gensō Sōsa, it is a splendid piece firmly within the aesthetic of Japanese pottery. It is clearly “unmatched” (and unmatchable). It is blunt; its finesse lies in its bluntness and the intentional crudity of the modeling. It bears witness to the artist’s handling of it. It is very heavy for a teabowl and so large that I wonder if it wouldn’t be difficult to drink from.

Purchased from Treasures of Oldtimes in Bangkok, December 2022.