Japanese ceramics

Magazine Antiques, March, 2003 by Alfred Mayor

Japanese collectors have an almost mystical feeling for their ceramics, associating them first and foremost with the earth from which they sprang. Consider, for example, this passage about one of the sites where white-glazed pottery was first made in Japan, during the Momoyama period (1573-1615). "Each time I visit the old kiln sites at Mino I am deeply moved. I envision the potters going back and forth bearing loads of firewood. I can imagine their joy when the kiln is ready to be unloaded, and even more their despair if the firing proved a failure. Deep in the mountains of Mino things are as they have always been. In the spring the plum trees blossom, and violets bloom along the paths. In summer, the irises and water lilies are out. In autumn, the pampas grass plumes appear just about the time the bush clover is puffing out its graceful flowers, and the wild grapes are turning color. Persimmons have been strung to dry from the eaves of a mountain house; their shadows are silhouetted on the translucent shoji screens. In winter, if a wood thrush comes to pay a call, it is caught in a fine mesh bird net. All of these subjects were given lively expression at the hands of the potters who decorated Shino and Oribe ware."

Shino and Oribe wares are the subjects of this book by two Japanese ceramics scholars, and the examples they have illustrated are indeed decorated with the blooms and birds found in the countryside outside the kiln, albeit they are sometimes rendered in such shorthand that only an impassioned collector can name the subject.

These wares were made largely to satisfy the requirements of the tea ceremony which grew in popularity during the Momoyama period. The famous tea masters were extremely demanding and particularly valued the white glaze of Shino ware, which the authors here compare to "that of the first snow of the season, or to the last traces of the winter snow, which the warm spring winds are erasing as the bush warbler's first song rings out. Shino's white surface is soft like a mother's breast; it brings back memories of childhood.... Shino ware is the spirit of tea, the essence of pottery." It was the essence of pottery for its creators as well as its admirers. Once they had applied the glaze, "after offering sake and prayers to the gods of the kiln, and ritually scattering salt to purify the area, they entrusted their pieces to the fire." Today, the cost of a fine Shino teabowl, that being the preferred form, is the same as that of a fine house. A Shino teabowl so renowned it has a name--Furisode (a type of ornate kimo no)--is illustrated at the top of the book's jacket at left.

Oribe ware is characterized by a copper green glaze as opposed to Shino's feldspathic white glaze. Yet some authorities feel that the two are one and the same, differing only in color. Oribe ware was favored by the tea master Furuta Oribe (1544-1615), who was also a distinguished general. He added eating and drinking to the tea ceremony and preferred robust utensils, which were supplied by the makers of the ware that beam his name. An example is the square plate illustrated at the bottom of the book's jacket.

Whereas the decoration on Shino ware is spare, even skeletal, that on Oribe wares "is particularly rich in the multiplicity of its de signs, including animal, human, and abstract motifs of all kinds." Indeed, the wealth of abstractions gives Oribe ware an astonishingly modem look. There is, for example, a set of food dishes in the stylized shape of flying plovers, their wings glazed a deep green. The white-glazed center of the dishes is decorated with a wandering thin vine intersecting disks of brown concentric targets and the three balls of the pawn broker's sign. The whole pattern is ruled horizontally by four thick brown lines. The caption suggests a comparison to a composition by Paul Klee, but if you substituted Joan Miro you might be closer to the mark. Then there is a set of five food dishes in the shape of crescent moons decorated with pampas grass, a link also found in classic Japanese poetry. However, here the grasses are interrupted by attenuated swirls of blue glaze, perhaps splashed on at random , or perhaps not.

It is impossible to convey the spirit of Shino and Oribe stoneware without seeing a kaleidoscope of the illustrations in this book. Even then it is questionable whether the Western eye can summon up the emotion that these venerated ceramic objects inspire in the Japanese collector. This is a book for the ceramics collector with an elastic imagination and the courage to follow it wherever it leads.

Classic Stoneware of Japan: Shino and Oribe, by Ryoji Kuroda and Takeshi Murayama (Kodansha International, 917-322-6200), $35 (hardcovers).