230. KISHIMOTO Kennin, 1934- , Iga-ware vase with paired ear lugs

230. KISHIMOTO Kennin 岸本謙仁, 1934- , Iga sō-mimi hanaire 伊賀双耳花入 (Iga-ware vase with paired ear lugs)

Born in Nagoya, Kishimoto now lives in Toki, Gifu Prefecture. After working in a production kiln, in 1960 he began a serious pursuit of pottery in Mino. He produces wares in the Shino, Oribe, Iga, ki-Seto, and celadon traditions. He has made unique contributions to each of these very different approaches to pottery. Apparently he likes to work in one tradition, mastering it and making it his own, and then moves on to new challenges. He is best known for his Iga-ware and has pieces in the collections of the Yale University Art Gallery, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Brooklyn Museum, the Peabody Essex Museum, the Cincinnati Art Museum, and the Minneapolis Institute of Art. 

Gray clay, unglazed, colors due to kiln effects and natural ash glazing; some green glass-like vitrification. Weight: 2.7 kg (6.1 lb). Height: 29 cm (11-1/2 in). Width of rim: 13 cm (5-1/4 in); maximum: 16.4 (6-1/2 in); of base: 13 cm (5-1/4 in). 

This sits on the flat base. The remains of the wads used to separate the piece from the kiln shelves during firing are visible on the bottom.  The lower end of the piece is a bulbous convex arc extending to a height of 10.5 cm (4-1/4 in), with the maximum diameter just below the midpoint of the bulge. On opposite sides, on the upper half of the bulge, the walls were crushed inward. At the lower edge, just above the base, is what may be the artist’s mark incised into the clay (they could also just be random marks). Above the bulge, the walls are roughly cylindrical, tilting slightly forward toward the front. At the rim, the walls were rolled outward to form a prominent lip. The lip was bent downward on one side, almost like a pouring spout. Two handles, or “ear” lugs—a feature of Iga-ware vases--were attached just under the rim, on opposite sides of the long neck. The exterior of the vase is encircled by shallow horizontal lines. They may be remnants of a coil-building process or perhaps were gouged into the clay after the piece was shaped. They appear to predate the attachment of the handles and the creation of the indentations in the bulge. A ledge was shaped around the interior of the mouth. The interior of the piece follows the contours of the exterior. The surface of the piece is slightly rough and irregular. 

This was unglazed. Much of the exterior is covered with a natural ash glaze, in the gray and black color ranges. The ledge just inside the mouth and many of the horizontal lines on the exterior have green glass-like deposits of vitrified ash (bidoro). Beads of vitrified ash run down the interior. One side of the piece shows kiln effects in the reddish-brown color range, as does part of the base. The interior, particularly the upper portions, similarly shows kiln effects and natural ash glazing. 

This came in a box, inscribed by the artist on one side in two lines: on the right, Iga sō-mimi hanaire 伊賀双耳花入 (Iga-ware vase with paired ear lugs); and on the left, the artist’s given name, Kennin 謙仁, with the artist’s seal stamped in red bearing the seal script versions of the same characters. 

This is a monumental piece. It is insistently clay. 

Purchased from the Kura Monzen Gallery in Kyoto, Japan, September 2023 (invoice, shipping and customs documents). 

229. Kutsugata kuro Oribe chawan (clog-shaped black Oribe teabowl)

229.  Kutsugata  kuro Oribe chawan  沓形黒織部茶碗  (clog-shaped black Oribe teabowl)

Gray clay; glazed in black and cream with added decorations in brown; foot ring and base left unglazed. Weight: 398 g (14 oz). Width of rim: 14 x 11 cm (5-1/2 x 4-3/8 in); of foot ring: 5.4 x 5.2 cm (2-3/16 x 2 in). Height. 6.6 cm (2-5/8 in). 

This is a kutsugata, or “clog-shaped” teabowl. It sits on the foot ring, which is an irregular oval, about 0.5 cm (1/4 in) high on the exterior; the interior of the foot ring was hollowed out to slightly less than this depth. Above the foot ring, the bottom rises at a shallow angle to the junction with the vertical walls, which begin 1.7 cm (5/8 in) above the base. An artist’s mark was inscribed on the bottom. There could be characters inscribed within the foot ring, but that may just be my eye trying to find patterns in the scratches. The bottom dimensions of the sides are slightly narrower than the rim but generally mirror the shape of the rim. There is a horizontal groove a finger’s width wide running around the piece, centered just below the midpoint of the walls. Below this the walls are shaped in a shallow convex arc; above it, the walls swell gently outward to the rim in a straightish line. The walls have many horizontal lines running around the piece. The rim is rounded. The interior follows the contours of the exterior but is much smoother. Overall the surface is quite smooth, including the unglazed sections. The clay looks coarse, but it is actually fine-grained. The base is pitted but otherwise smooth to the touch. 

The foot ring and most of the base were left unglazed. The outer edges of the base have some spillover black glaze on one side. The interior and most of the exterior were coated in a thick black glaze. Two sections of the walls were covered in a cream glaze (probably put on before the black glaze was applied). Portions of the cream glaze have a rosy orange tint, somewhat like the effects found with the Shino glaze. A brown glaze was used to draw patterns in the cream areas. 

This came in an old wooden box, inscribed in two lines. The line on the right reads: 沓形 (kutsugata, or “clog-shaped”; the line on the left:  黒織部茶碗  (kuro Oribe chawan, or “black Oribe teabowl”). 

The seller dated this piece to the Meiji era. 

Purchased from Treasures of Old Times), Bangcock, Thailand, September 2023. 

228. TAKIGUCHI Kiheiji, 1937- , aka Oribe chawan (red Oribe teabowl)

228. TAKIGUCHI Kiheiji  瀧口喜兵爾,  1937- ,  赤織部茶盌 aka Oribe chawan (red Oribe teabowl)

Takiguchi was born in the Asakusa district of Tokyo and graduated from the Faculty of Agriculture at Tamagawa University. He studied under the renowned Mino-ware master KATŌ Jūemon (see items 184 and 227), before venturing out on his own in 1965. His artistic pursuits took him to Kyoto's Shinroku Tsuji pottery studio and later led him to establish his kiln in Ogaya, Mino. A move to the U.S. in 1971 led him to Malborough, Vermont, where he set up an anagama kiln in 1973 and followed with a climbing kiln in 1975. He is a specialist in red and black Oribe-ware.  His works are in the collections of the Brooklyn Museum and the Minneapolis Museum of Art. 

Light reddish-tan and white clays, with a slip glaze and added decoration in green, cream, and brown glazes; foot ring and surrounding areas left unglazed. Weight: 334 g (12 oz). Width of rim: 13 x 10 cm (5 x 4 in); of foot ring: 5.6 x 5.3 cm (2-3/8 x 2 in). Height: 6.6 cm (2-5/8 in). 

This is a kutsugata , or “clog-shaped” teabowl. It sits on the foot ring, which is an irregular oval, about 0.4 cm (3/16 in) high on the exterior; the interior of the foot ring was hollowed out to about the same depth. Above the foot ring, the walls rise in a straight line at about a 30-deegree angle to a height of 1.2 cm (1/2 in) and approximately the width and shape of the rim. The potter’s mark was incised into the clay of the base. There is a sharp break in direction at this point. Above this, the walls rise vertically to about 1.2 cm (1/2 in) below the rim in a straightish line. Just above the base, there is a circular groove around the exterior of the piece. Then the walls bulge outward slightly in a convex arc ending in a shallow concave groove, about a finger’s width wide, encircling the piece. This area of the walls contains many short vertical and horizontal grooves and bulges. Above this, the walls angle outward slightly to the rim, which is curved. The interior of the piece mirrors the exterior, but the walls are much smoother. The clay is finely grained, and even the unglazed portions are smooth. 

Another piece using the Narumi technique. The lower section of this was formed with a light reddish-tan clay; the rim with a whitish clay. With the exceptions of the foot ring and an area of the base surrounding it, the piece was covered in a slip, which became glossy during firing. The front side was decorated in two cartwheels using cream and brown glazes. On the back side are two squares—the outline and an interior area are marked off with borders drawn with the brown glaze. The area between the borders was filled in the cream glaze. The rim and the upper section of both the interior and the exterior was covered with the heavy green Oribe copper glaze, which was allowed to run down the sides in several beads, partially covering the other decorations. A narrow line of white clay is occasionally visible at the base of the green glaze. 

This came in a wooden box, with a short printed biography and an orange wrapping cloth. One side of the box is inscribed, in two columns:  on the right--赤織部茶盌 (aka Oribe chawan, “red Oribe teabowl”; a variant character for wan is used); and on the left--喜兵爾 (Kiheiji), followed by the artist’s seal in red ink. 

The seller labeled this a “Momoyama-style” teabowl. It is strikingly similar to item 227 both in construction and decoration. This piece is much more lively, however. In  the Hayashi version, the triangles within the cartwheels were drawn with straight lines; here the sides of the triangles are curved, which imparts a sense of motion to the wheels. The greater abandon with which the green glaze was applied here also makes this a more free-wheeling piece. Item 227 is static in comparison. 

Purchased from Shogun Pottery (a new branch of Treasures of Old Times), in Hobarth, Australia, September 2023. (Joint receipt with item 227).

227. HAYASHI Eiji, 1931- , aka Oribe chawan (red Oribe teabowl)

 227. HAYASHI Eiji 林英仁, 1931- , 赤織部茶碗 aka Oribe chawan (red Oribe teabowl)

From Tajimi City, Gifu Prefecture, Hayashi is the grandson of the esteemed Katō Juemon (see item 184), a designated Gifu prefectural intangible cultural property. Under the guidance of his grandfather, he underwent rigorous training in the traditional art of pottery. He specializes in old-style Mino-, Shino-, and Kiseto-wares. He graduated from Tamagawa University, where he subsequently was an assistant professor. In 1968, Hayashi returned to his hometown and dedicated himself primarily to tea pottery. 

White and reddish-tan clays using the Narumi technique (see item 217); slip glazed with added decorations in Oribe green, cream, and brown; foot ring and surrounding areas left unglazed. Weight: 392 g (14 oz).Width of rim: 14 x 10 cm (5-1/2 x 4 in); of foot ring: 5.7 x 5.5 cm (2-3/8 x 2-1/8 in). Height: 7.5 cm (2-7/8 in). 

This is a kutsugata , or “clog-shaped” teabowl. It sits on the foot ring, which is an irregular oval, about 0.6 cm (1/4 in) high on the exterior; the interior of the foot ring was hollowed out to about a third of that on the interior. Above the foot ring, the walls rise in a straight line at a shallow angle to a height of 1.8 cm (5/8  in). The potter’s mark was incised into the clay at this point. There is a sharp break in direction at this point. Above this, the wall rise vertically to the rim in a straightish line. Just above the base, there is a circular groove around the exterior of the piece. Then the walls tilt slightly outward as they rise to around 1.8 cm below the rim. This area of the walls is flatter but still retains the shallow grooves and ridges created by the potter’s fingers as he shaped the piece. Above this, there is another groove encircling the piece before the walls flare outward at a sharper angle to meet the rim.  This area has several shallow grooves running around the circumference. The interior of the piece mirrors the exterior, but the walls are much smoother. The clay is finely grained, and even the unglazed portions are smooth. 

With the exception of the foot ring and the area of the base surrounding it, the piece was covered with a slip, which, when the piece was fired, created a glossy surface. The upper portion of the piece (roughly the first 2 cm [3/4 in]) was formed from a white clay. The top part of this section were covered with a thin layer of the green copper Oribe glaze. The white clay is visible elsewhere beneath the slip. Beneath this, the piece was made from a reddish-tan clay. This section was decorated in cream and brown. The front has two cartwheels. The back side has two square and three circular elements. Each is outlined in brown, with the interior filled in with cream, with added lines in brown. 

This came in a wooden box with an inscription in three lines, reading from right to left: 赤織部 (aka Oribe, “red Oribe); 茶碗 (chawan, “teabowl”); 英仁 (Eiji), followed by the artist’s seal stamped in red with the characters for his “studio name,” or sobriquet. The characters in the seal are 桃山, which can be read tōsan or tōzan or momoyama. They translate literally as “peach mountain.” The second reading might be a pun on 登山, “climbing the mountain,” an important ritual in some sects of Japanese Buddhism. “Momoyama” is the name given to a period of Japanese history; item 228, which has a similar decorative scheme, was identified by the seller as a Momoyama-style piece  If the latter is the correct interpretation, it may be Hayashi’s claim to be making old-style pieces. Of course, all these meanings could be invoked simultaneously. The wooden box was further enclosed in a cardboard box with a label identifying the contents. 

Purchased from Shogun Pottery (a new branch of Treasures of Old Times), in Hobarth, Australia, September 2023 (receipt).

Pottery

My first encounter with pottery as an art form, rather than something food was served in or eaten off of or drunk from, came when my mother took a course at her local women’s club. One of the pieces she made was a dark green bowl. It was shaped by piling a few smooth rocks into a mound and draping a thinly rolled circle of clay over the pile. She used a blue glaze on it, but something happened in the kiln and it turned out green. I was impressed not only by the sinuous curves of the piece and its rich green color but also by the fact that the result was a happy accident. The shape was determined by a random assortment of stones brought to the class by the instructor, and the interactions of temperature and the other items in the kiln changed the color of the glaze.

My next serious encounter with pottery came in the mid-1960s when I was a student in Taiwan. The Palace Museum had just opened, and among its exhibitions were items from the Qing emperors’ ceramics collection.  The emperors had access to the output of the imperial kilns at Jingdezhen in Jiangxi province, as well as the accumulated treasures of their predecessors. They had exacting standards—pieces that were even slightly misshapen or had mistakes in glazing and firing didn’t make it into their collection. But the visible evidence that human beings could produce perfectly shaped pots and then glaze and fire them without flaws impressed me deeply. The precision of a Song dynasty green celadon teabowl is breathtaking.

Five years later, nine months in Kyoto introduced me to Japanese pottery and its sometimes different aesthetic and approach to pottery. I was on a student budget and couldn’t afford to buy any pieces, but I could visit museums and showrooms, and what I saw there shaped what I have come to value in pottery. A vintage Oribe or Shino-ware teabowl has a bluntness and skilled clumsiness every bit as breathtaking as the perfection of that Song celadon.

Twenty years later I visited the warehouse of an importer of Chinese art goods in Redwood City on the San Francisco Peninsula. There on the shelves were hundreds of perfect Chinese porcelains. There might be two dozen identical shiny vases, all the same size and shape, each exhibiting a flawless Song dynasty celadon glaze. Or a row of blue-and-white bowls, again all the same size and shape, all with the same pictures on them. The sight was disturbing—even appalling. In the modern world of machine-shaped objects, carefully controlled chemistry, and electric kilns with uniform temperatures, perfection is reproducible—and suspect. (No doubt, some of the objects I saw that day ended up being sold as “genuine” Chinese antiques.) 

That experience also deepened my appreciation of the wares of art potters. Many can throw perfectly shaped pots on the wheel, but they cannot produce exact copies of the same object over and over. Even when formed in molds, each piece will be unique—there will be at least slight variations in shape and decoration. This doesn’t reflect a lack of skill on the potter’s part. It is because they’re not machines.

Unpredictability plays an element in handmade pottery. The uniqueness of a piece results from the interaction of the potter’s skill, knowledge, and experience with the uncertainty of the movements of glazes down the side of a pot, the airflow in kilns, variations in temperature, the placement of items in the kiln, the interactions of minerals and chemicals in the clay and the glaze, the random deposits of ash, smoke, and fumes. Skilled potters use their training and knowledge to shape and decorate a pot and to place it appropriately or advantageously in the kiln to expose it or shield it from the flames, smoke, and heat, but they can only influence the way the piece might turn out--they can't control it completely.

What attracts me to a piece is the unexpected. The first encounter is visual. Something about a piece—the shape, the decoration, the way that shape and decoration interact—makes it stand out. A perfectly shaped pot is an incredible achievement, but shapes don’t have to be regular and uniform to be interesting. The potter may vary a design in small ways, and a pot becomes unique. I have some pieces that look like the potter was angry or drunk or inept or clumsy—but the result is inspired. Decoration may enhance a shape, accentuating it or differentiating sections of the piece. Or it may work against it, blurring a familiar shape and obscuring or distorting the outline. A vase that if glazed in a solid color-- perhaps cream or a pastel green--would be insipid becomes lively and energetic when the surface colors are the result of pit- or wood-firing. The surface of the pot may become a picture field, which may or may not work with the shape. Decoration can be formal or whimsical. It can be an elaborate, detailed, realistic picture or a splash of glaze thrown at the pot and allowed to run uncontrolled down the side, its flow determined by chance and gravity. I favor the latter—the random is more intriguing than the planned. I tend to avoid the pretty or the cute.

The second encounter is tactile. Some pieces fit comfortably in the hands; others don’t. Some are well-balanced; some aren’t. Some have heft and body and gravity; others are weightless and fragile. A pot can be surprisingly heavy or light. The surface may be rough, it may be smooth. Whatever a pot is, it needs to be held and to be touched to be fully appreciated.

The qualities I value are uniqueness, the unexpected, the surprising, the random, the human. Pottery has been around for millennia. It serves human purposes. It is made by humans for humans, for a practical use, for decoration, for both. It can be graceful and fluid, airy; it can be blunt and weighty, earthbound. It can be beautiful; it can be ugly. Even mistakes can make a pot interesting. What it shouldn’t be is boring and uninspired and repetitious. It should be a delight to look at again and again. It should be difficult to determine the best side to display.

What a good pot has is a conjunction of shape and decoration. Part of that is owing to the potter’s talent, but some of it is the result of random chance. There are factors a potter can influence; there are others beyond human planning—a random gust of wind blowing through the open stoke hole of a wood-fired kiln can send a plume of hot ash swirling through the kiln, pitting the sides of the pots facing the air flow with black spots. The clay may contain trace elements of some mineral, and a familiar glaze interacts chemically with it and becomes streaked with a different color. In the end, what I want is serendipity—the happy marriage of the planned and the accident.

The Photographs and Other Conventions

I apologize for the quality of the photographs. Particularly with the smaller items, foreshortening comes into play, distorting their shapes. I find it difficult to hold my cell phone so that the items are level, and the tilts visible in many pictures in no way reflect the ability of the potter to create a symmetrical, upright pot. Unless the description notes that the body of a pot slants or is otherwise intentionally misshapen, blame me not the potter for any distortions.

To make up for the bad photographs, I give detailed descriptions of the shape and decoration of each item. The measurements are approximate. The more technical descriptions likely were supplied by the artist.

Generally the pictures are ordered as follows: a view from above showing both the mouth of the pot and the sides; side view(s); a view from directly overhead; a view of the base. If the decoration on the pot is uniform on all sides, I may show only one or two side views; if the decoration varies, I show all four sides. In the second case, the pots are rotated clockwise, and the sequence of pictures shows the succession of views as the pot is turned ninety degrees to the left.

Japanese and Chinese names are given surname first. 

If the potter named the piece as a particular object, that is duplicated here. For example, if an American potter called a handleless teacup a yunomi, following Japanese usage, then the caption and description of the piece use that term, on the grounds that the name reveals something of the potter's intent and vision of the object. 

226. SUGIMOTO Sadamitsu, 1935- , radical Iga vase

226. SUGIMOTO Sadamitsu 杉本貞光 , 1935- , 伊賀花入 Iga hanaire (radical Iga vase with shinshoku 侵食 effects)

Sugimoto Sadamitsu was born in Tokyo in 1935. A strong adherent of the Zen tradition, Sugimoto established his own kiln at 33, receiving the kiln name Teragaito 寺垣外 (meaning "outside the temple walls") from his mentor, Daitokuji priest Tachibana Daiki (some sources read the given name Oki), who also inscribed the box for this piece. He has spent his life studying kohiki, Shigaraki-, Iga-, and Raku- wares. Sugimoto is largely self-taught in pottery. He has an anagama kiln in the mountains near Shigaraki.

Gray clay, with kiln effects in the pink, red, reddish brown, gray, and black ranges, with natural ash glazing and vitrification over much of the exterior and interior surfaces, with a couple of bidoro green glass beads on the sides and along the rim. Weight: 1844 g (4.1 lb). Height: 19 cm (7-1/2 in). Diameter of base: 13.5 cm (5-3/8 in). 

The base is roughly circular with many pits and breaks. It is slightly concave toward the center. The piece sits on the flatter, outer edges of the base. The artist’s mark, a cross resembling the katakana “na” above a vertical stroke slanting to the right toward the bottom, was incised into the base. This may be a quick version of the first character in his given name, 貞, especially if written in the older style with the vertical line on the left meeting the bottom horizontal line at a right angle. Comparison of the interior depth with the external height shows that the base is roughly 1.3 cm (1/2 in) thick. For the first 2.5 cm (1 in) or so, the walls of the piece are roughly circular. Above that the vase is shaped into a three-sided piece with rounded corners. A roughly 2-cm (3/4 in)-wide strip attached to the outside encircles the rim. The rim itself is 1.3 cm (1/2 in) thick. The triangular shape of the piece is most noticeable from the top; the three sides are about 12 cm (4-3/4 in) long at the top. 

The walls are dented, pitted, and encrusted with blobs of clay. At the top, the rim suffered what is known as shinshoku 侵食 in Japanese pottery—the fire was so hot that the clay melted—forming a break in the piece.  The dictionary translation of shinshoku is “erosion” or “corrosion,” but those English terms seem too passive to me. The Japanese characters imply an aggressive, active attack—something more like “eat at” or “devour” captures the meaning better, I think. I asked Robert Mangold, the owner of the Kura Monzen Gallery, if the artist had done something to produce this effect intentionally. He replied, “Shinshoku is mostly about kiln placement and firing time.  I do not think a potter would weaken a piece, as that would make it quite difficult to control, and you would have a great chance of losing it altogether.  Not ideal considering the size of the kilns and the limited space for Hai Kaburi [灰被 = natural ash glazing] pieces.” The surface of this varies from smooth over the vitrified areas to very rough over the unglazed portions. 

This was unglazed. The colors and the glossy surface are the results of kiln effects and natural ash glazing. The front (arbitrarily the side with the shinshoku and the left sides received the most ash glazing. The right side was left largely untouched, as was the base, and was colored red by the heat. Almost all the interior is covered with a vitrified ash glaze. The is one long bidoro glass bead on the exterior, as well as areas of green bidoro deposits on the rim and the interior. 

This came in a wooden box with a blue cloth, with calligraphy by the monk Daiki on the top and underside of the lid and on the bottom of the box. The characters on the top read, in two rows: 伊賀花入 Iga hanaire (vase), and 貞光造 Sadamitsu-zō (made by Sadamitsu). Those on the underside, also in two rows, read: 紫野 Murasakino (a placename in Kyoto and the location of the Daitokuji Temple) and 大亀 Daiki, followed by Daiki’s kaō sigil. (A kaō 花押 sigil is a stylized form of signature used by tea practitioners.)  The characters on the bottom, in three groups read: in the upper right corner: 信楽  (Shigaraki); in the lower right corner in two lines: 寺垣外  (Teragaito) and 貞光 (Sadamitsu); and in the lower left corner: 花入 hanaire (vase).

Purchased from the Kura Monzen Gallery in Kyoto, Japan in July 2023 (invoice, shipping and customs documents)