The Piece Dubbed Frosting

So the piece posted last week, and the piece from this week have been relegated to office duty, and I only got around to photographing them because I took them home for cleaning. And I do not know what it is but the fact that they are now home and once again sparkling and clean, I have a renewed fondness for them.

This piece is fascinating in many ways. One is in part why it is dubbed frosting, it has an incredibly thick white glaze spread over it, and it undulates in such a way that it looks like frosting hastily applied to the cup. Especially since in a few area's the clay underneath shows through. That is not all this extra thick glaze, seems to do wonders for how it progresses through the seven stages of Hagi.

Any time I have seen cracks in a glaze on a piece, they are usually rather fine, so perhaps it makes it hard to see, but typically a crack runs into another crack, forming T's or X's, though this piece has cracks that run through a piece and dead end as pictured below.

Though the more this piece is used the better appeal it seems to have. The uniqueness that there are large patches of glaze practically untouched by the staining and the crazing. But the staining appearing on the outside seems oh so welcoming as seen by the first picture. I will be watching this piece develop with much hope, and is the piece I think of when I consider how extra rough clay Hagi pieces (Oni-Hagi) can produce some incredibly interesting effects.

Ice Split

A glaze that is quite unique, although I am not entirely sure if it was just adapted for Hagi by Yamane Seigan, or if this glaze is uniquely his creation. This piece is the only Ice split piece I have, and I love it and hate it for the same reason. That is that this piece while techinically an ice split does not really showcase the desired effect in the glazes used to create an Ice Split. The desired effect is to look like white sheets of ice splitting and breaking up over a nice blue sea.

But why I love this piece is because it is so far from the established norm for Ice Splits, with an almost speckled pattern on the sides, and anywhere there is a fissure on the white glaze applied over the piece, it usually opens up to blackness as opposed to a deep blue. In fact the only hints of the blue glaze underneath the white occurs at the very bottom as seen in the picture above.

A note on my thoughts about Ice Splits, while they appear to be to be incredibly stunning, I am hesitant to believe that they will show some of the charm Hagi develops over time. That is because I think so many glazes go into creating an Ice Split, that it is likely that the tea will have a very hard time progressing through the whole piece to eventually stain the outside. While I hope to be proven wrong, I partially believe that because even just looking at the staining on the inside of the piece, it looks like the stain only is superficially in the glaze. By that I mean the stain only appears to actually be in the outermost glaze, and that it has not progressed any deeper.

Growing Fondness

Looking back I am still unsure what prompted me to buy this piece, it was acquired in my spending spree on teaware shortly after I started acquiring my first pieces of artisan teaware and I was hooked. But while this piece has never quite been my favorite, I did continue to use it somewhat regularly, and when it started to change it took on a whole new life in my eyes.

The pale tan/pink of the outside is just now starting to not look pristine, and the piece now is darkening on the outside similar to that pictured above on the inside. It gives the piece an amazing depth that it never quite had before. The glaze of this piece is I believe either a Biwa, or a Loquat glaze, although I am not sure if those two are synonymous. I know these pieces are called Biwa wans, by the Artist Deishi, and the glaze is similar to a Loquat, although each artists look slightly different.

Comparison of Shino Cups

This large cup is a Pink Shino by Chris Chaney a.k.a ChicagoPotter. It is certainly taking on a lot of wonderful character, the pink is subtle but I think I got one of the more subtle blends of the pink glaze he created for the Teachat Special Offer from which this cup came. The cup had a Sakura/ spring theme, but the sign of it on this cup is the "grass" you see showing through on the side of the cup.

The inside is a bit more pale also showing slight spots from the kiln. Though I am thinking I am starting to like Shino a bit, as it can stain rather like Hagi, and this one is showing the start of staining.

This cup is one of two I have from a Korean artist Hong Seong Il, which I find absolutely wonderful. They are tiny little cups probably only hold an ounce and a half possible two ounces, but they are wonderful, and the one I have been using quite often is the one that I find has such a great character. I do not know if it is considered a flaw, but the aspect of the piece is shown, there appear to be several holes/ pock marks in the glaze on one side of the inside of the cup. I personally like it as I by far prefer cups in which at some point I can see what the clay of the piece looks like when fired.

I mentioned this earlier, but I like how shino's also show crackling and staining, and perhaps I am a fan of thick and gloopy glazes, as is evident by quite a bit of my Hagi pieces. It may be a while before I write about more pieces as I am running out of items that I have yet to talk about. Although I have some hopefully wonderful works coming to me within the next several months.