a single bowl,
held in two hands.
stone i · the threshold
The bowl was thrown on a winter morning, when the studio was cold enough that the slip crystallized on the wheel head. The potter did not measure. The clay told her where to stop.
What you hold now is what remained when everything unnecessary fell away.
stoneware · ash glaze · 2014
The bowl fell from a low shelf in autumn. Three fragments. The hairline of a fourth that had always been there.
2019 · october
Urushi lacquer mixed with gold powder. A thin brush. Six weeks of waiting between layers, while the lacquer cured in damp air.
2020 · spring
Over the years the bowl darkens. The glaze gathers tea where the surface dipped under the throwing pressure. The foot wears smooth against the cypress shelf.
The repair line, once a vivid wound, settles into the rest of the surface. Gold, like anything alive, accepts the breath of the room around it.
A bowl is not finished when it leaves the kiln. A bowl is finished when the hands that knew it forget the difference between holding and being held.
notes from a working studio · kyoto
一
stone v · the return