“I can think of no other country where so much emphasis is placed on ceramics
and where so much is collected so wideley. ”
Amaury Saint-Gilles, Earth‘n‘Fire
Figure 1: I think no display of Japanese pottery is complete without a Tanuki. He has a bottle of saki in one hand, an empyty purse in the other, a big belly and large genitals and stays outside in the garden somewhere.
Figure 2: One of my favorite rice bowls, this is from the Seto Street fair.
Figure 3: I have two of these tea cups, probably reproductions of early Meji style made pre WWII.
Figure 4: I have five of these tea cups purchased at Sue-No Sato in Seto Japan. They are a gray shino.
Figure 5: A choko for holding the liquid that for dipping noodles such as soba, udon or somen.
Figure 6: e-Shino plate, I have a set of five of these with an old warped box.
Figure 7: Shino tea cup
Figure 8: These next four, probably from Mashiko, I picked up in second hand stores. This one has hand painted alternating color stripes.I use them for fruit drinks in the morning.
Figure 8: This one has three areas of color hanging from the to,p
Figure 8: This one is very thin but has thick clay and is heavy.
Figure 8: This one is more like a standard produciton tea cup.
Figure 8: Definitely a Mashiko production yuinomi
Figure 9: Definitely a Shino production yuinomi
Figure 10: A bowl pruchased at theSeto street fair.
Figure 11: Inside the same bowl you can see the shape.
Figure 11: A large Mashiko platter
Figure 12: A large Mashiko platter
Figure 13: A Mashiko plate
Figure 14: A Mashiko plate
Figure 14: A bowl from the Miyake family, I believe that they were part of a wedding present to my wife’s parents.
Figure 14:The inside of the bowl.
Most people in the US are more familiar with the decorative styles of Japanesee ceramics which have elaborate attractive styllized decorations. However I find the “folk kilns” more appealing, I lke the immdeiate feeling of the glaze, the clay , and the interaction of the potter and the kiln.
Most Japanese pottery is functional. People buy it to use, especially yuinomi and tea pot. It is common to find in a department store a whole department of hand made pottery and ceramics available for sale. There are many levels of cost, and while ot all people are “collectors”I think many if not most people in Japan like to drink tea from a pottery yuinomi.
There is another difference, in Japan there are not a lot of potters going around touting “I don’t make functional pottery, I am an Artist!” There are not a lot museum curators and art critics who claim they have a special insight, not available to us commoners, into the social implications of pottery for some Truth in understanding society,
Functional pottery is considered Art in Japan, not like in the US a lower form of something we call craft. Of course some is considered “better” than others, some potters are more skilled, there are production kilns of hand thrown pottery which produce the same thing( or very similar) over and over, and famous potters who over see a kiln with a staff of potters who actually do the work. And then there are potters who spend thier careers trying to acheive thier own visions, but still most within the tradition of their choice. But no matter how much the personal vison of the potter is in the finished work, Usually one can recognize whereit fits in the tradition of Bizen, Oribe, Hagi, Karatsu, Tamba, etc.
It is common for Department stores to have exhibitions of the work of a specific potter or a kiln area. There are regular publications, such as magazines, focusing on pottery and potters, and its not uncommon for magazines which focus on aspects of popular culture to have articles about a potter or style of pottery. Even once a potter becomes famous thier name may be commonly known.
Mahiko, a town in Tochigi, is well known today as the home of Hamada Shoji and as a place for tourists to visit. Pottery had been made there for many hundreds of years before, however, like many folk crafts in Japan had bcome unpopular in the earlypart of the 2oth century, Hamada, along with Bernard Leach and Yanagi Soetsu and others rekindled interest in pottery and folk art.
The town is fun to visit and an easy day trip from Tokyo. While Hamade and others have contributed some great pottery to this world, many have commented that in Mashilko there is also an lot of mediocre pottery.
There are some samples here which are good examples of Mashiko style. On the guinomi page is a piece by Hamada Tomoo, the grandson of Hamada Shoji. His work is both creative and yet in the Mashiko style.
(more to come later)