270. MATSUMOTO Haruyuki, 1983- , porcelain bowl with kiln effects

270. MATSUMOTO Haruyuki 松本治幸, 1983- , Hakuji yōhen wan 白磁窯変碗  (porcelain bowl with kiln effects)

 

Matsumoto was born in Tottori in 1983 and now lives in Shiga Prefecture. He graduated from the design course of the Seoul National University of Science and Technology in 2006 and received an MA from Kyoto Seika University in 2010  His works are made of white or black porcelain, which he produces himself by mixing iron into white porcelain.  The walls of many of his pieces are, like this one, so thin that they are translucent.  Matsumoto values the way his delicate pieces feel when held and revels in the uncertainty of firing a thin piece‒in the heat, the thin walls may move or warp, adding to the character of the piece. For other examples of his work, see his Instagram account @haruyukima. 

Weight: 100g (3.6 oz). White porcelain clay. Fired unglazed with ash deposits in black and gray, and hi-iro effects in shades of red. The white porcelain clay is visible on much of the surface. Weight: 100 g (3.6 oz). Height: 8.7 cm (3-1/2 in). Width: rim, 10.3 cm (4-1/8 in); base, 3.5 cm 1-3/8 in). 

The base is a flat disk, a perfect circle about 0.5 cm (3/16 in) high. A small paper label, with the artist’s full name written on it, is attached to the center of the base. The body of  the bowl is shaped much like the bowl of many red wine glasses. Any given cross-section is a rough circle. The walls rise in a convex arc to the rim. The gradient is much steeper toward the bottom. The maximum width of 10.7 cm (4-1/4 in) is roughly 3.8 cm (1-1/2 in) above the base; from there the walls slope slowly inward to the rim. The interior follows the shape of the exterior. The surface of this is rough in the areas of the ash deposits and smooth elsewhere. 

The outstanding physical feature of this piece is the thinness of the walls. At the rim, the walls are barely a millimeter thick (somewhat less than a sixteenth of an inch). Nearer the base, the walls appear to be a bit thicker, but nowhere near as substantial as the walls of most teabowls. Comparison of the weight of this bowl with item 269 reveals how much lighter this piece is than similar items. 

This was fired unglazed, and all surface colors and effects result from kiln effects. The front of the bowl (arbitrarily the side with the most kiln effects) received a heavy blasting of ash, as did much of the interior, which left them either covered with deposits of gray and black ash or colored gray. The margins of these areas, especially on the exterior, were colored pink and vermillion (hi-iro). The back side and the base, as well as large spot on the interior, were unaffected by kiln effects or only lightly spotted by fly ash. In these areas, the white porcelain clay appears. 

Robert Mangold, the owner of the Kura Monzen Gallery, characterized the piece as “terrifyingly delicate,”  which it is. 

This came in a wooden box, inscribed by the artist on the lid, in two lines: 白磁窯変碗 / 治 hakuji yōhen wan / Haru  (porcelain bowl with kiln effects / Haru). The final character is inscribed over the artist’s seal stamped in red. Included in the box are an orange wrapping cloth and a short printed biography. 

Purchased from the Kura Monzen Gallery, Kyoto, Japan, in January 2025 (invoice, shipping and customs documents, jointly with item 269).

 

269. KIMURA Moriyasu , 1935- , Teabowl with Tenmoku glaze

 269. KIMURA Moriyasu 木村盛康, 1935- , Tenmokuyū chawan 天目釉茶盌  (Teabowl with Tenmoku glaze)

 

Kimura was born into the Kimura family of potters in Kyoto, the youngest of four children. After learning the basics of ceramics at the Kyoto Municipal Industrial High School, he studied under his eldest brother, Morikazu (1921-2015), and learned decorating techniques from his father, Shigeji (1895-1971) . Soon after graduating high school, he saw the National Treasure “yuteki 油滴 (oilspot)  tenmoku teabowl” (see below) in the Atake collection of the Museum of Oriental Ceramics in Osaka and decided to devote himself to Tenmoku glazes, for which he is now famous. 

In 1959, at the age of 24, Moriyasu gained national attention when he was selected as a participant in the Modern Ceramics of Japan exhibition at the National Museum of Art. In the 1960s he began exhibiting at the Nihon Dentō Kōgeiten (National Traditional Crafts Exhibition). His works are held in several important public collections, including the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, Dallas and Houston museums, Peabody Essex Museum, National Palace Museum in Taiwan, and the collection of the Ise Shrine. In 2019-2020, his works were featured in the Iridescent Sparkles of Tenmoku – Works by Kimura Moriyasu exhibition at the Museum of Oriental Ceramics in Osaka. 

Light tan clay. “Oilspot Tenmoku” glaze; oilspots black; area between oilspots, ranging from cream through coral to a dark chocolate colors; foot ring and surrounding area unglazed. Weight: 325 g (11.6 oz). Height: 7.5 cm (3 in). Widths: rim (the widest point), 12 cm (4-3/4 in); of foot ring, 3.3 cm (1-1/4in). 

This sits on the base of the foot ring, which is quite bumpy and irregular and roughly a centimeter wide (3/8 in). On the outside the foot ring measures about one centimeter high; the interior of the ring, which is 3.3 cm (1-1/4 in) in diameter, was only slightly hollowed out. In the unglazed area of the wall beside the foot ring, the artist impressed a rectangular seal into the clay, leaving the seal character version of his given name stamped into the clay (see the third photo from the end). The body of the bowl is a rough circle in cross-section. Above the foot ring, the walls proper extend outward and upward in a very shallow convex arc to a height of around 3.3 cm (1-1/4 in). At this point, the bowl is about 10 cm (4 in) in diameter. Above this the walls extend upward vertically. There is a shallow horizontal groove extending around the bowl about halfway up. Above the groove the walls move outward gradually to the rim, the widest point of the piece. As can be seen in the unglazed portion, the clay body is rather pitted. The surface of the glazed portion is bumpy from the indentations of the oilspots but otherwise smooth to the touch. 

The Tenmoku glaze combines feldspar, limestone, and iron oxide.  The more quickly a piece is cooled, the blacker the glaze becomes. A long firing process and a clay body heavily colored with iron increase the opportunity for iron from the clay to be drawn into the glaze. While the glaze is molten, iron can migrate within the glaze to form surface crystals, as in the “oilspot” glaze, or remain in solution deeper within the glaze for a rich glossy color. Oilspots are more common in an oxidation firing. A longer cooling time allows for maximum surface crystals. For more on this glaze, see Wikipedia, s.v. “Tenmoku.” 

Covered with a Tenmoku glaze except for the foot ring and the area surrounding it.  The surface is densely covered with black “oilspots.” These form circular dimples within the glaze (see the fourth photo). The center of each oilspot reflects light, making the surface appear spotted with glowing dots. The glaze between the oilspots is raised, forming elevated rivulets variously colored cream, coral, and shades of brown. 

This came in a wooden box inscribed by the artist on the topside of the lid in two lines: 天目釉 / 茶盌 tenmokuyū / chawan (Tenmoku glaze / teabowl); the underside of the lid is inscribed 盛康作  Moriyasu saku (made by Moriyasu). The third character is written over the artist’s seal in red ink. showing his given name in seal script.  The same seal was stamped in red on a blue wrapping cloth included in the box. 

Purchased from the Kura Monzen Gallery, Kyoto, Japan, in January 2025 (invoice, shipping and customs documents, jointly with item 270)

268. KUMAKURA Junkichi ,1920-1985, Irabo tsubo (pot with Irabo glaze)

 268.  KUMAKURA Junkichi 熊倉順吉, 1920-1985, Irabo tsubo  伊羅保壺  (pot with Irabo glaze)

Kumakura was a major figure in the world of Japanese sculptural ceramics. He was born in 1920 in Kyoto and graduated in 1942 from the Kyoto Institute of Technology as a design major. From 1946 to 1947, Kumakura was an assistant to Tomimoto Kenkichi (1886-1963) at the Shōsai Tōen kiln, where he was greatly influenced by Tomimoto’s techniques and his concept of the role of ceramist-artist. Throughout his career, Kumakura was attracted to and inspired by the improvisational character of jazz and its then-marginalized position in the world of music. Equally unusually for the period, much of his work is boldly and explicitly focused on sexuality and eroticism.  

He was awarded the first Japan Ceramic Society Prize in 1954 and soon thereafter he was invited to submit works to innumerable national and international exhibitions including the Brussels World Exposition in 1958, where he took the grand prize, and the International Ceramics Exhibition in Prague in 1962, where he took the silver prize. In 1989 a major retrospective exhibition, Kumakura Junkichi: Organs That Provoke, was held at the National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo. His works are part of the permanent collections of the Japanese National Museum of Modern Art and the National Museum of Modern Art, Kyoto. 

In the late 1940s, Kumakura became a core member of the avant-garde Sōdeisha 走泥社 (Crawling Through Mud Association; for more on this group of ceramicists, see the Wikipedia article, s.v. Sodeisha). Core to his practice were the aesthetic tenets of Sōdeisha that sought to elevate the status of the nonfunctional clay object. The beginnings of this philosophical exploration are manifested in his frequent use of two-dimensional geometric compositions on the flat surfaces of his functional wares. Early in his career, he used molds, a practice learned from Hamada Shōji and the folk arts movement. Later, his work became boldly sculptural. Kumakura was a pioneer of sculptural and avant-garde ceramics, which became a formal category in Japanese ceramics during the mid-twentieth century. His interest in sculptural, figurative, and organic forms bled into his functional wares, with their geometric and abstract shapes. 

White clay. Irabo glaze in muddy yellow and brown shades on all sides; bottom left unglazed. Weight: 840 g (1.9 lb). Height: 18.3 cm (7-1/4 in). Diameter of mouth: 2.5 cm (1 in). Dimensions of base: 20 x 11.7 cm (7-7/8 x 4-5/8 in). 

This is classed as an ichirin-sashi  一輪挿 , a vase for one flower. The piece rests on the flat margins of the base. The base is an oblong with pointed ends, slightly concave in the middle. Next to one of the pointed ends, Kumakura stamped a small square version of his seal, consisting of the first character of his given name, 順 jun. The edges of the base are slightly beveled upward. Above the base the walls form a shallow convex arc, moving upward and inward to the neck, which begins about 14.5 cm (5-3/4 in) above the base. The long neck is about 3.3 cm (1-1/4 in) wide at the bottom and slants inward slightly as it rises to the mouth, which is 2.5 cm (1 in) in diameter. There are pronounced seams where the front and back are joined, beginning at the pointed ends of the base and continuing to the mouth.  The surface of the piece is bumpy. The main body of the work is quite symmetrical; the neck less so. 

The sides of this were glazed using the Irabo glaze, resulting in colors in the brownish yellow to dark brown range. Irabo is one of the traditional ash glazes of Japan. According to one source, the glaze is made by combining equal parts of wood ash and an iron-rich clay such as ochre. Other sources say it made by combining equal parts of washed wood ash and feldspar. In an oxidizing firing using the second formula, this produces a yellow-brown glaze; in a reduction firing, the colors range from olive to a deep blue-green. The base, including the beveled edges, was left unglazed. The unglazed beveled edges present as a visible line of white at the bottom of the piece. 

For Kumakura, this is a relatively staid composition. For other examples of his work, see Figs. 49-53 in Samuel J. Lurie and Beatrice L. Chang, Contemporary Japanese Ceramics: Fired with Passion (New York, 2006). 

This came in a wooden box, inscribed by Kumakura in three lines: 伊羅保  / 壺  / 熊倉順  Irabo / tsubo / Kumakura Jun  (Irabo[-glazed] / pot / Kumakura Jun), followed by the artist’s seal stamped in red (a larger version of the same seal stamped on the base of the pot). A small paper label with the handwritten number 117 is affixed to one side of the box. Included in the box was a short biography; the last year noted is 1970, which dates this piece between 1970 and 1985. 

Purchased from the Kura Monzen Gallery, Kyoto, Japan, in January 2025 (invoice, shipping and customs documents)