Onishi Masafumi Tanba Yaki Guinomi

This is a special piece I purchased for my birthday this past May.  Oddly fitting as I had just come from working on a wood fire, that I should buy a piece from a Japanese pottery town known for producing wonderful wood fired pieces.  This piece was certainly woodfired, though it has a very minimal build up of ash, it did however smell like a bonfire for quite awhile after receiving the piece.

While guinomi are technically Sake cups, I found them nice to adapt to tea for when you want to have smaller cups of tea.  This cup is going to be an additional cup for Gyokuro, though it might occasionally be used for some Chinese oolongs as well.



The most apparent features of this cup are an almost black rock like appearance, looking like it is made from volcanic rock, and just to give it an extra rugged appeal it is faceted in a spiral fashion around the cup. The nicest parts about the facets is they are rather widely spaced, giving a plethora of comfortable spots for fingers to grip the piece.  Though do not let the appearance fool you this piece is rather soft and light weight.

The most interesting portion of this piece, though incredibly hard to photograph is that the interior is actually glazed with a goldish colored glaze.  While an incredibly thin glaze, it really adds a little bit more of a mystery to this piece.  If I had one critique about this piece, which is really just picking knits with personal preference, the foot seems unfinished to me.  ( I will try and add a picture later.)


Though as part of my gyokuro set up, I now have what I call Heaven and Hell.

Hokujo Kyusu

This kyusu is a dream to hold and use.  I have said that I seem to be escalating the quality of the kyusu's a buy each time, and I am really not sure how much higher I can climb even though this was a rather affordable kyusu.   This is a wonderfully light piece of potter with a soft and delicate clay which I honestly say makes me think I am holding air, or really do not have a good grip on anything at all when I am holding this but looking somewhere else.



Larger than my Gyokko kyusu by at least double its size, it is just as light if not lighter.  It also has an incredibly fine sesame screen pictured below.  I wish I was making this up, but since purchasing this kyusu, I have only once used one of my other kyusu to brew sencha, even though I have made it a dozen or more times ( probably closer to two dozen times).




I could honestly rant and rave about this kyusu, some more, but I think the pictures more than do it justice.  I highly encourage everyone to look into some of these artisan Tokoname Kyusu.

Mukuhara Kashun Tsuchinohana Yunomi

I can not remember how many years ago it was that a Tsuchinohana Yunomi from Mukuhara Kashun first caught my eye.  Well needless to say, that one was bought before I could save up the money, and I have been watching them in anticipation ever since, finally for my 25th birthday decided to purchase one.   I was asked by someone what caught my eye about this style of piece, and it is something that I struggle to put into words.  I could do it in one word, heavily weighted with a multitude of different meanings all buried within.  So in one word: impermanence.

Maybe it is the fact that it looks ancient when brand new, looks like one good wind storm or a down poor of rain will cause it to crumble away.  Something that is almost the antithesis of flashy, in the sense that you would far more expect to see this cup in a little cave, or hermits hovel, as opposed to a palace, or mansion.   While it really is not frail ( though I haven't fully tested that, and I do not intend to any time soon)  the appearance is somewhat endearing.



As to the actual details of the piece, incredibly light weight, with a smooth but bumpy texture, from the very sandy clay.   As pictured above it has a lovely kiln/glaze effect up one side of the piece, which really highlights all the sand in the clay body.  The foot looks a bit small  but is nicely carved.  Though Mukuhara kashuns chop is so small and such an irregular shape I often have a very hard time discerning it from the standard bumps and cracks in some of his more coarse clay bodies.



The most interesting aspect about this yunomi is how it appears to be riddled with all sorts of very veyr tiny cracks, some large and clearly going through the glaze, and others very very small, and completely covered by the outer glaze,or are perhaps just slight fissures in the outer glaze, revealing the underglaze, but it really gives a very dry and cracked earth appearance to the piece.

Booh-Ya, Tsuboya!

I am going to say that Tsuboya Yaki falls into the category that I didn't know existed basically until I purchased this piece.  Tsuboya is a traditional Japanese pottery out of Osaka. While there is quite little information about it online in English, from what I have gathered their Yunomi are known for having this shape complete with rather large foot.

The artist is Nakamura Masahiro, and while this is not the initial piece I ordered from this artist ( the one I wanted was sold the day before and it had yet to show up in inventory). But the owner of the gallery informed me that he had another piece from this artist, and offered to send me photos.  Oddly this piece is really growing on me, The glaze pattern is quite interesting, I have never quite been one for Polka Dots.




This though seems to be one of the Japanese pieces I have that is the most resilient, with no sign of staining in crackles in the glaze ( can't really even see any crackles on the inside).  Its also rather nice, and don't tell anyone, but when I just wanted to drink big cups, I brewed up some Black/ Red tea and poured directly from the pot into the cup, and it was incredibly nice.  With my hagi I am scared to do something like that as I feel the strong odours will somehow get locked in the clay and then every time I have sencha after that it smells like Keemun or similar.

So I guess onto my review of the piece.  Super smooth glaze that is fun to touch, and some how my pinky always finds its self resting on and playing with the foot, when I hold it or drink it.   It definitely falls into the category of teaware I have started to explore recently, which are pieces that strive for perfection in their shape and form.  As such it may not be readily apparent, but those two photos are from opposite sides of the cup, even though they look basically identical. 

Oil Spot Sakazuki

This is one of the two Daisen Yaki pieces I have, and it is most certainly stunning. In fact after trying for quite some time to accurately capture the oil spot effect on the inside of the piece, this is the best I could manage. In person it looks so much more vivid, like silver blue veins of some sort of precious stone running through the white glaze of the cup.

Even more amazing is this cup is staining, and I am starting to learn that in fact there are very few glazed ceramics do not stain in such a fashion. Something which I initially believed was exclusive to Hagi Yaki. In fact I am quite looking forward to the staining of this piece, that seems to starting to slowly occur on the outside of the cup, which is a just plain white glaze.

It is this piece which has me wanting to view many more oil spot glazes, as while from a distance they can look plain, up close they seem to almost be captivating.

The Staining of Hagi

Granted I have only been collecting Hagi Yaki for a little over a year now, but in that time I have learned that each piece has a personality uniquely its own. Now there are many ways a piece can have personality, but the personality I am directly referring to in this post is how it changes through use. Like people there are people that look prematurely old, and then there are those that seem like the have the secret of youth.

One thing I will say the lighter the color of the glaze the more quickly it seems to show signs of use, and Seigan Blues are notoriously stain resistant. Case and point, the piece pictured below has been used likely over 50 times, and is probably getting rather close to 100 uses, although it hardly looks different than when it first arrived.

Whereas within far fewer uses, one of my quickest staining pieces inside looked like this.

Which now the inside is much more evenly stained, and the outside nearly matches although is slightly lighter.

Though the type of piece also seems to alter how staining occurs, it seems most Kyusu's and Hohin, are made in such a way that staining progresses much slower, although sometimes things happen in rather curious ways. Such as seen in this picture.

The staining starting occur in certain areas of this hohin are rather amazing, as it is started above most water levels, and the opposite side of the spout. My only guess is, as I tend to treat hohins more like Chinese teapots, often filling them rather close to the rim, that the exposed clay rim in that area on the back of the piece is slightly more porous, and has absorbed water and tea and, tried to expel it through the glaze on the outside causing those stains.

While I have a decent feel as to how quickly the inside of a piece can start to stain, usually dependent on the type of glaze, color of glaze, and thickness of glaze. The outside is a major toss up, seemingly more reliant on the how the piece was made. I do not know a lot about what goes into firing temperatures and how it alters the clay body, nor do I know if a two seemingly identical pieces can be radically different due to its production. Such as for some of the artists who read this, could a clay body possibly be made more dense, by squeezing harder in a pinch-work or thrown piece?

Shark Skin Glaze, Kairagi

Perhaps my favorite Hagi glaze is Kairagi or Shark Skin, which as far as I understand is so named because it was said to resemble the sharkskin placed over the handles of Samurai's swords. But the characteristic appearance of a Kairagi glaze is a white straw ash appearance glaze with lots of exposed clay underneath with the glaze crawling at many unique angles.

This hohin (hobin ) is one such glazed item, while the Yunomi pictured below is a second. Both of which are by the artist Mukuhara Kashun.

These are the only two Mukuhara Kashun pieces I currently have, but I am loving them every chance I get. Although I will say I have only seen this glaze done by one other artist and Kashun is by far the better of the two in terms of execution of this glaze. The most amazing thing about him pulling off this glaze while Hagi is known for showing off use through staining, even these pieces in pristine condition show stains in the wrinkles in the glaze.

Daisen Yaki

Daisen Yaki or Daisen Ware, has honestly eluded my best efforts to learn about it. Hindered most likely by my nearly nonexistent Japanese language skills. So far I know of only one vendor that offers Daisen Yaki to the west, that being Magokorodo, so I actually contacted him with several questions trying to learn more about this type of Japanese ceramic ware.

I honestly view the response to my questions as a bit of a puzzle, I have enough experience in foreign languages to know that it is completely different from being able to read another language, then being able to write in it in a way that is completely understandable to a native speaker of that language. That being said I think in my correspondence with the vendor things got lost in translation in several steps, which may fuel me to try and improve my Japanese. But I have honestly been rereading the message a few times a week trying to gleam as much as I can from it.

My questions focused on whether or not T. Suzuki is the only artist producing Daisen Yaki, as his works are the only pieces I have ever seen labeled as such. While I still can not gleam from the vendors response an exact answer to that question the more I read it the more I understand about Japanese Ceramics in general. Some things I have already known such as the names of most types of pottery focus on the region in which they are produced. Although there are many different kilns all over Japan and only a few of them have any sort of wide spread notority, and even fewer are known for consistently producing top notch works of art.

So I am looking forward to acquiring more Daisen Yaki pieces, currently I have the two pictured in this post. The most amazing thing is how incredibly different these two pieces are.