Japanese Teabowls!!

This past semester I have become enamored with making traditional Japanese teabowls.  They serve as somewhat of an escape from the push to conceptualize everything I make while in grad school.  I suppose that I find it relaxing to work with such a simple form.  Part of it is that when you throw a teabowl you shouldn’t think about it too much.  They are supposed to be quickly and roughly made, and taking too much care with a single piece usually leads to overworking it.  I usually end up challenging myself to throw each bowl as quickly as possible without taking the time to center perfectly.  What results is that each piece has a lopsided and charming character of its own, with fresh and spontaneous marks that don’t look contrived.  At least that’s the goal…

The ideal aesthetic here is that of the wabi-sabi, which focuses on the unpretentious, the natural, and the beauty of the imperfect.  For example, if you click on the thumbnail below of the inside of the teabowl, you will see that the glaze crawled.  Normally this is seen as a glaze defect, but when imperfections are seen as beautiful, crawling can be desirable.

Here are a some of my favorites from the past few months.  I will have more up on my website at www.artbydavehill.com soon along with other ceramic work.  I’ll let you know on here when that happens.  All of these were fired in our anagama here at Clemson.  Click on the thumbnails to see them large…

teabowl with ash glaze

inside of shino teabowl with crawling

teabowl with shino type glaze

teabowl with nuka glaze

teabowl with oribe glaze

other side of oribe teabowl

teabowl with shino glaze

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~ by dhillclay on August 7, 2009.