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.

The Copper Yunomi

Kiln placement is certainly an amazing thing.  This being one of my pieces from the latest Ceramics class that I took, and as you will see nearly all the pieces look completely different from one another.  This piece like all the others is unglazed on the outside.  Well actually I lie with this one, on this cup I dipped my finger in the glaze and made a few streaks on the outside of the cup, but you can barely notice them unless you are specifically looking for them.

This piece though came out looking pure copper in color nearly the whole way around.  None of the white/ green ash build up on the outside.  The above picture shows the area that accumulated the most ash, which only give the slightest hint of the white ash build up that quite a few of my other piece are nearly covered in.



This is the bare side of the piece, which you can see two of those finger swipes with glaze on the outside, the rest is basically clay that was blushed by the fire, to a degree that it blends wonderfully with the rest of the piece.




I gave this cup a try yesterday, it preforms well enough, but something just doesn't feel quite right about using it.  Proportions seem off in too many ways, lip is too thick, foot is too small, size and weight just in general seem off.   It is fun to look at especially in what I captured nicely in the photo below.  The interior of this cup is oddly mesmerizing.

A yunomi by yours truely

This is the first piece I made the was pulled from the anagama kiln from my class at the Kalamazoo Institute of Arts that I have used.  I used it two nights in a row, while it is a good size for sencha, it is also an interesting and good shape for Chinese teas as well, though often only filling it a third to half of the way with the way I brew.



I actually quite enjoy this piece, although it is weird to look back at the pictures of the pieces before they were fired.  As all the lips were even all the way around, I did not realize how much the thickness causes pieces to contract in the kiln, giving way to a rather uneven lip.



The interior color is fantastic for tea, although reduction did cause some ashy shadows to occur inside the piece which give the piece a nice bit of added character.  In the hand the piece feels nice, although I am large person and a little on the stronger side, so I do not mind the slight heft to this piece.   In fact I bought a new Kyusu that I will need to share on here in a bit, that actually scares me to handle because even though it is a decent size, it feels so light that it nearly feels like I am holding air when moving it.





I will say I am happy with all my anagama kiln pieces, and am actually shocked at how incredibly different they all are based on where they were placed in the kiln.   I forget exactly where this piece was, I believe in approximately the "middle" as it does not have  a huge amount of ash build up, but it is far from being mostly bare like one of my other pieces.   I should also mention that this only has glaze applied to the interior, everything on the left half of the piece in the picture above is built up wood ash.