257. SAKATA Keizō, 1949-2004, Hagi-ware bamboo-shaped vase

257.  SAKATA Keizō 坂田慶造  (十五代 坂田泥華 Sakata Deika XV), 1949-2004. Hagi XXha take hanaire  萩XX破竹花入 (Hagi-ware broken bamboo-shaped vase)

 

The Sakata family is one of the ancient lineages of Hagi-ware potters. Keizō was the son of Sakata Deika XIV (1915-2010). After graduating from university, he studied sculpture and spent some time traveling in the United States before beginning work at the family kiln. This exposure outside the traditional world of Hagi-ware pottery is sometimes cited as setting him apart from other local potters. In 1978, he received an award at the First Exhibition of New Traditional Crafts (Dentō Kōgei Shinsaku Ten). In 1989, he became a member of the Japan Kōgei Association and exhibited with that organization, garnering a number of prizes as well as receiving awards at the Japan Traditional Crafts Exhibition (Dentō Kōgei Ten) and the Grand Prize at the Tanabe Museum Ceramics of Tea Exhibition. He was expected to make great advances as the next Sakata Deika but died in 2004 at the age of 54. He was posthumously named the 15th generation Sakata Deika. A brother is now Sakata Deika XVI. 

Gray clay, visible only on the bottom half of the interior. The color of the glaze is hard to pin down. In sunlight the exterior is a milky coffee color; in artificial light, it acquires a greenish hue. The glaze on the interior is whiter, with a bluish cast in some lights. Only the upper half or so of the interior was glazed. The base and a small patch at the bottom of the back side were left unglazed and show kiln-effect colors in a reddish tan and a dark red. Weight: 4.4 kg (9.7 lb). Height: 33.3 cm (13 in). Width: top. 12 cm (4-3/4 in); widest: 13.5 cm (5-1/4 in); base: 11.5 x 10.5 cm (4-1/2 x 4-1/8 in). 

The vase is shaped to resemble one of the dilapidated bamboo vases that often hang on the walls or pillars of a tea ceremony hut. It sits on a flat, eight-sided base, a rough rectangle with angled corners. The artist’s mark, the character 慶, was incised into the base with shallow lines (on the lower left in the next to last picture). Comparison of the interior depth with the exterior walls shows that the base is about 1.3 cm (1/2 in) thick. The walls rise in irregular vertical slabs from each side of the base. The front (the side with the torn away section and the bamboo leaves) is more rounded than the back. The piece as a whole tilts backward slightly. A deep, rough gouge encircles the piece about 7 cm (2-3/4 in) above the vase. The widest point of the vase occurs at this point. The gouge is meant to mimic the joint between two sections of bamboo. On the front side, just above this horizontal gouge, Sakata made two bamboo-leaf shaped gouges. The clay surrounding these gouges was forced to the side to create jagged lines defining them. No apparent attempt was made to trim away the excess. Another notable feature of the piece is the rough, almost violent tearing away of a section of the front of the pot to suggest a portion of the bamboo wall that was ripped off. The margins of this opening are very rough and irregular. The walls themselves are quite thick, measuring from 2.5 to 3.0 cm (1 to 1-3/16 in) at the top. The clay is so thick that several shallow, vertical fissures opened up on the interior walls while the piece was drying/ The interior is roughly circular in cross-section. The surface is smoothest over the most heavily glazed sections. Elsewhere it is quite bumpy and rough. 

Glazed in a milky coffee color over most of the exterior surfaces. The glaze covers the surface unevenly. Most sections received only a light coating, allowing the clay beneath to show through as darker patches. The glaze is thickest and most uniform over the smoother panels, in the areas with a more textured surface, it is more broken, exposing the clay beneath. On the interior, the glaze is a bluish white, again with many darker streaks showing through. 

This came in a wooden box, inscribed by the artist in two lines:  萩XX破竹花入  / 坂田慶造  Hagi XX ha take hanaire / Sakata Keizō (Hagi-ware broken bamboo-[shaped] vase / Sakata Keizō), followed by Sakata’s seal stamped in red. There are two characters in the line on the right that I cannot read, but from their position, they must modify “bamboo” and probably characterize the design of the vase. Included in the box was a leaflet with a potted biography of the artist. 

Purchased from Kura Monzen Gallery in Kyoto, Japan, July 2024 (invoice, shipping and customs documents).

256. KOGA Kenji, 1945- , Korean-style Karatsu-ware clam-shaped small dishes

256. KOGA Kenji 古賀賢治, 1945- , Chōsen Karatsu hamaguri mukōzuke 朝鮮唐津蛤向付  (Korean-style Karatsu-ware clam-shaped small dishes), set of five

 

Koga was born in 1945 in Fukuoka Prefecture. He came to potting rather later than most, at the age of 29 in 1974. He established his own kiln, the Koken Kama 古賢窯,  in Kita Kyūshū City in 1991. To judge from online pictures of other examples of works, he specializes in table ware. 

A coarse clay, the unglazed portions of the pieces are a light tan, with redder colors within the foot rings. Glazed in black and white, with the foot ring and the surrounding areas left unglazed. Each of the five pieces has different dimensions. Weight: 292 – 358 g (10.4 – 12.7 oz). Length: 15.2 – 15.6 cm (6 – 6-1/4 in). Width: 12.3 – 14.0 cm (4-7/8 – 5-1/2 in). Height: 5.4 -5.6 cm (2-1/8 – 2-1/4 in). 

These were shaped to resemble clam shell halves. Each piece sits on a roughly circular foot ring, again of variable diameters, ranging from 6.3 to 7.5 cm (2-1/2 – 3 in). The foot rings are about a centimeter (3/8 in) high on the outside. The inside of the rings was hollowed out very shallowly. The artist’s sigil was incised within the rings. Above the rings, the walls form two distinct zones. The first rises outward at a shallow angle above the foot ring to about a third of the way up. Above this, the second zone extends outward at a steeper angle in more or less straight lines to the rim. There is a bump on the exterior walls where the two zones meet, especially at the back of each piece. The back sides are flatter. It appears that the pieces were shaped as circular bowls. Koga then slit what would become the back side to the depth of the upper zone and pulled the right-hand side over the left-hand side to create a more vertical wall at the back. At the rear of these slits, he attached two wedges as if they were staples holding the slit shut.  Except in the center of the inside, where the glaze is thickest, the surface is bumpy. 

There were glazed in what is known as “Korean-style” Karatsu-ware. The front portion of the inside and the corresponding outside walls were glazed in black.The back portions of the pieces were then covered in a thin white glaze on both the inside and the outside. Due to the thinness of the glaze, it functioned almost as a luster glaze over most of this area, leading to a glossy, dun brown color on these parts. Where the white glaze pooled at the lower edges of the outside walls and in the back center of the insides, it showed up as white after firing. The outside edges of the white patches where it overlaps the black glaze and the glaze is thinner are blue. The lower portion of the external walls and the foot rings were left unglazed. 

Chōsen Karatsu refers to ware that has been glazed with both an ash glaze with a high iron content (black to amber) and a glaze made with the ashes of rice straw mix with a slip (white), applied separately top/bottom or left/right on the ware. The contrast of white and black glazes is quite striking, and the multihued waterfall effect of white, blue, purple, and yellow where the glazes melt together and flow is a defining characteristic of this style of Karatsu-ware. The color changes on the surface of this ware are unpredictable and reminiscent of natural landscapes. 

Mukōzuke is a sashimi course in a formal kaiseki dinner. 

This came in a wooden box, inscribed by Koga in three lines: 朝鮮唐津蛤向付  Chōsen Karatsu hamaguri mukōzuke  (Korean-style Karatsu-ware clam-shaped small dishes) / 唐津焼古賢窯Karatsuyaki Koken Kama  (Karatsu-ware Koken Kiln) / Koga Kenji 古賀賢治  followed by his seal stamped in red. A short, printed biography was included in the box. 

Robert Mangold, the owner of the Kura Monzen Gallery, had these directly from Koga and dates them to before 2000. 

Puchased from the Kura Monzen Gallery in Kyoto, Japan, in July 2024 (invoice, shipping and customs documents).

 

255. HASHIMOTO Tomonari, 1990- , “untitled” utsuwa

 255. HASHIMOTO Tomonari 橋本知成, 1990- , “untitled” utsuwa  器 (vessel), raku-fired

 

For Hashimoto, see item no. 236. 

Robert Mangold, the owner of the Kura Monzen Gallery, asked Hashimoto to make a few smaller pieces more suitable for shipping than his usual sizable sculptures. Hashimoto responded with a series of small utsuwa, or dishes, like this container. Utsuwa, as applied to pottery, is a general term for cooking and serving dishes. 

Black clay, glazed inside and out, mostly glossy black on the interior and about two-thirds black on the exterior, with other colors in the red and brown range, with a coppery sheen on the red parts, especially on the base. Some unglazed areas on the base and around the bottom of the exterior walls. Weight: 370 g (13 oz). Height: 10 cm (4 in). Diameter: 10.3-11.0 cm (4-1/8 – 4-3/8 in). 

This sits a shallow foot ring, 5.7-6.0 cm (2-1/4 – 2-3/8 in) in diameter. Above the foot ring, the base flares outward at a shallow angle to a height of around one centimeter (3/8 in), where the base meets the walls. The walls rise in a very shallow concave arc to the rim. The walls are quite thin for a piece of this size, a quality apparent in its relatively low weight. The diameter of the walls is highly irregular. An oddity is the vertical line beginning at the lip on one side of the exterior extending downward the length of the wall, across the bottom, and up the opposite side 180 degrees around the cup. On the interior the line is apparent on the bottom but not on the sides. On the exterior walls, the line is very bumpy. Either the piece was made in two identical sections and joined together but without smoothing over the joint or Hashimoto scored the surface in this fashion to suggest that the piece consists of two sections. Either way, the line breaks the piece into two sections and suggests division rather than unity. This otherwise has a smooth finish to the surface. 

This was fired Raku-style and has the characteristic glossy finish of Raku-ware. There are five spots around the circumference at the lower edge of the walls that are unglazed; they appear to be where Hashimoto held the piece with his fingers when he dipped it in the glaze. There are also several unglazed patches on the base. The coppery hues predominate on the glazed portions of the base. 

This came in a wooden box inscribed the artist in two lines: untitled 器 (utsuwa; vessel) / Tomonari, followed by his seal stamped in red. Included with the shipment was a copy of the printed catalogue made for the exhibition of Hashimoto’s works at the Kura Monzen Gallery in 2023. 

Purchased from the Kura Monzen Gallery, Kyoto, Japan, June 2024 (invoice, shipping and customs documents)