Description
I have named this chawan tea bowl ‘Twelve Layers Down.’ It is made from clay collected locally which lies many layers below the surface. The glaze is a different clay which lies shallower but still covered and found only once it was uncovered by construction work. It was fired in a saggar (a container to protect the kiln from combustion gases) with stones of coal which I found on the beach. The coal has been taken up from deep under ground where we have been digging down to extract it along with fire clay. These mining industries were important and large parts of the economy in this region up until the 1980s when the last mine closed. You can still find coal on the beach today.
There are a lot of facets to this chawan tea bowl. The Japanese talk about landscapes in their ceramics and when looking at this pot I believe that you get a clear feeling of looking at beautiful and expansive vistas. The glaze is a clay, ash and silica combination which has some very small particles in it that sink to the bottom of the emulsion when it is mixed up. Due to this physical property the interior where the glaze was poured in allowed these particles to settle in the base. This created glaze which has white, blue and tan streaking created by this chemistry. The outer surface was dipped and there was no opportunity for these heavier particles to attach themselves leading to a different chemistry. The inside of the bowl had tea leaves lying in it which is what created the brown glassy areas I believe.
Another separate phenomenon is from the coal reducing the oxygen out of the materials in certain areas. This is visible where the outer glaze has turned a dark green colour, the colour that iron becomes when it looses its oxygen molecules to the fire. This can also be seen in the clay on the bottom where it has turned a dark purple where the clay has lost its oxygen and been reduced. There was two pieces of coal that both ended up lying against the bowl creating these two separate regions of reduction and also partially melting onto the surface creating a rough crater like texture.
This is a special piece intended for use in the tea ceremony and should be treated with care. Do not get oil on the surface, wash by hand and do not use detergents unless absolutely necessary. In this way the tea will not be impacted by other tastes except the taste of tea and the water.
The bowl is signed with my initials on the bottom.