Yixing

User avatar
LeoFox
Posts: 1777
Joined: Tue Sep 01, 2020 4:01 pm
Location: Washington DC

Fri May 07, 2021 6:20 pm

Thank you for introducing some other viewpoints. I would say artful irregularity in pursuit of some historical aesthetic is ultimately historical reproduction. I am more aligned with yanagi's thinking - and would not consider that representative of an irregularity that is aligned with the natural disorder. To me it is just another flavor of forcefully introducing irregularity. As for distinguishing sloppiness from "wabi" - that responsibility falls on the person who is selecting the piece - and whether it is sloppy or beautiful to personal taste.


Thanks for clarifying thick/rough vs wabi sabi.
Last edited by LeoFox on Fri May 07, 2021 7:07 pm, edited 1 time in total.
User avatar
LeoFox
Posts: 1777
Joined: Tue Sep 01, 2020 4:01 pm
Location: Washington DC

Fri May 07, 2021 6:24 pm

faj wrote:
Fri May 07, 2021 5:44 pm
LeoFox wrote:
Fri May 07, 2021 4:33 pm
If intentional roughness is introduced, then you can argue it is not really rough..but pretending to be rough.
If I intentionally paint a room in blue, it is blue. It is not "accidentally-blue", but it is blue, unless the meaning of the word "blue" is distorted to the point where it no longer corresponds to its widely understood meaning.

If intentionally making something rough makes it "not really rough", then by "rough" one really mean "accidentally rough". It is perfectly OK to want an object that is accidentally rough, but the difference is not in the object itself, it is in your understanding of how the object came to be.

If an artisan uses a method that is known to yield an "accidentally rough" result, is that still true roughness? Maybe the "real roughness" is about using a method that is chosen for reasons that have nothing to do with the roughness it yields. If so, then seeking that roughness is about seeking objects for reasons that have nothing to do with the intent of their creator. It might actually entail rejecting works of art or craft because their creator had an intent and successfully achieved it.

It seems to me turning aesthetic preferences into systems of values or rules is fraught with peril...
The painting the room blue is a nice argument. However the problem here as you said is the definition of rough by which I mean accidentally irregular. My fault for not specifying that more clearly.

The question then is: can intentional accidental irregularity be comparable to true accidental irregularity.

One only has to look at some examples of the wood fired fad these days in certain yixing and Taiwanese teaware vendors to see it is not trivial to convincingly intentionally render accidental irregularity.
User avatar
Bok
Vendor
Posts: 5782
Joined: Wed Oct 04, 2017 8:55 am
Location: Taiwan

Fri May 07, 2021 7:17 pm

@wave_code interesting discussion and well worth continuing. For now I’ll only address the misconception that laid ground for it(without taken away from the rough-elegance topic per se):

The reason you might draw the conclusion antiques were rougher and stubbier etc. is that mostly only these ever make it to the Western market :)

These are the bottom of the antique segment, hence often referred to as commoner pots. While many are not crude, they are still unrefined in clay, finish and style(although that depends on who’s looking at it). Many for export only and not deemed good enough for the local market. The higher end pieces can be excruciatingly elegant and refined, the sense of proportions and detail much more refined than many of the contemporary pieces, remaining unmatched. One reason why the commoner pots are very easy to fake and certain others very difficult to replicate in detail(luckily so).

Compare early factory with what came in the immediate decades before for the same shape and you can immediately see a very sharp drop in elegance. I attached a Qing/Roc Biandeng compared with one from the 50 and 60s. It’s quite obvious.

Your quest remains a valid one though, but it’s based on an incorrect assumption.
Attachments
758B70AA-EA43-45FB-A0D3-D3ED852D61B4.jpeg
758B70AA-EA43-45FB-A0D3-D3ED852D61B4.jpeg (122.73 KiB) Viewed 3432 times
Ethan Kurland
Vendor
Posts: 1026
Joined: Thu Oct 12, 2017 1:01 am
Location: Boston
Contact:

Fri May 07, 2021 8:56 pm

Bok wrote:
Fri May 07, 2021 7:17 pm

Your quest remains a valid one though, but it’s based on an incorrect assumption.
Sounds like what followers of various types of leaders believe after the leaders are shown to be evil or corrupt and otherwise awful people. Sorry, to get off topic but I'm surrounded by people who look at a naked emperor & don't see that he has no clothes on (so to speak).
User avatar
steanze
Vendor
Posts: 985
Joined: Mon Oct 09, 2017 4:17 pm
Location: USA

Fri May 07, 2021 9:41 pm

LeoFox wrote:
Fri May 07, 2021 6:20 pm
Thank you for introducing some other viewpoints. I would say artful irregularity in pursuit of some historical aesthetic is ultimately historical reproduction. I am more aligned with yanagi's thinking - and would not consider that representative of an irregularity that is aligned with the natural disorder. To me it is just another flavor of forcefully introducing irregularity. As for distinguishing sloppiness from "wabi" - that responsibility falls on the person who is selecting the piece - and whether it is sloppy or beautiful to personal taste.


Thanks for clarifying thick/rough vs wabi sabi.
People with different views make the world more interesting :) For my preferences, none of the pieces by Hamada Shoji or Kawai Kanjiro I have seen quite matches the beauty of the works by Arakawa, Kaneshige and Rosanjin. There is a structure and rhythm within irregularity. Creating beauty with that rhythm requires purpose, and I believe it is less of a matter of personal taste than it may seem. The natural disorder itself has structure. And despite the rationale for accidental irregularity sounds reasonable, in the moment of aesthetic appreciation the theories fade in presence of the object, and their logic no longer holds much value. Once an artisan has trained their aesthetics, there is nothing forceful in realizing that aesthetics through their work... and the training is not much more than a process of self understanding.

Thanks for starting a conversation that goes beyond discussing the specifics of a particular teapot, this is quite fun.
User avatar
LeoFox
Posts: 1777
Joined: Tue Sep 01, 2020 4:01 pm
Location: Washington DC

Fri May 07, 2021 10:25 pm

steanze wrote:
Fri May 07, 2021 9:41 pm
LeoFox wrote:
Fri May 07, 2021 6:20 pm
Thank you for introducing some other viewpoints. I would say artful irregularity in pursuit of some historical aesthetic is ultimately historical reproduction. I am more aligned with yanagi's thinking - and would not consider that representative of an irregularity that is aligned with the natural disorder. To me it is just another flavor of forcefully introducing irregularity. As for distinguishing sloppiness from "wabi" - that responsibility falls on the person who is selecting the piece - and whether it is sloppy or beautiful to personal taste.


Thanks for clarifying thick/rough vs wabi sabi.
People with different views make the world more interesting :) For my preferences, none of the pieces by Hamada Shoji or Kawai Kanjiro I have seen quite matches the beauty of the works by Arakawa, Kaneshige and Rosanjin. There is a structure and rhythm within irregularity. Creating beauty with that rhythm requires purpose, and I believe it is less of a matter of personal taste than it may seem. The natural disorder itself has structure. And despite the rationale for accidental irregularity sounds reasonable, in the moment of aesthetic appreciation the theories fade in presence of the object, and their logic no longer holds much value. Once an artisan has trained their aesthetics, there is nothing forceful in realizing that aesthetics through their work... and the training is not much more than a process of self understanding.

Thanks for starting a conversation that goes beyond discussing the specifics of a particular teapot, this is quite fun.
This conversation is indeed very interesting - and my conflation of roughness in yixing as mentioned by wavecode with wabi sabi is probably because I've been thinking about irregularity a lot ever since drinking tea more seriously.

While I disagree with you that creating beauty requires purpose and that it is less a matter of personal taste - I acknowledge perhaps my viewpoint is shaped by the fact that I have never been an artist - and have never created anything for the purpose of aesthetic enjoyment for other people (unless my scientific papers count). Ultimately, no work of man has moved me more than some experience in nature or when I haphazardly notice an accidental scene: some leaves resting against rocks in an alley or the movement of birds in the evening sky -
Octagon
Posts: 16
Joined: Sat Mar 16, 2019 3:01 pm

Sat May 08, 2021 2:22 am

I heard the argument that once you intentionally try to make something look "rough" or wabi sabi, you lose the spirit of true roughness. Based on this argument true roughness is simply born out of a haphazard way of doing things.
I don’t think haphazard or unintentional is the right word, but I’m also struggling to find the right one. The idea, I think, is that roughness isn’t just another style but rather the effect of a natural way of doing things. Natural is opposed to artifice and the adorned but not opposed to training, reflection and intention. You might only achieve the natural through a lifetime of practice.
It seems to me turning aesthetic preferences into systems of values or rules is fraught with peril...
I think you can err on both extremes, so to speak: aesthetics without values might degenerate into the hedonistic and the sensualist. Aesthetics where ideas rule the day may on the other hand instrumentalize art and rob it of its autonomy.
While I disagree with you that creating beauty requires purpose
This is a tricky and interesting discussion. Especially now when AI can write poems (poem-like texts?) and paint. The idea that we can separate the aesthetic from the realm of ideas – that if the AI poem produces pleasure in me what does it matter if it was written by a computer? – is, I think, complicated. As I wrote above in response to faj, I think aesthetics has to both incorporate ideas and avoid being dominated by them.
User avatar
wave_code
Posts: 575
Joined: Wed Nov 21, 2018 2:10 pm
Location: Germany

Sat May 08, 2021 5:25 am

glad to see this sparked some thoughts and discussion - looking at cool pots is great and all, but I think getting down to more context/framework for what exactly we are looking at and actually seeing or appreciating as different individuals is even more interesting. getting outside of certain clay's general properties and affect on tea and whether something is authentic or not to me is where things get really interesting - who is drawn to collecting what due to the way something feels in the hand, looks on the table, what sense it gives them...

@Bok thanks for putting this in to context a bit more. I had a feeling this would probably be the case about my generalization. I was sort of half-knowingly also ignoring things like what I'm sure are considered high-end or idealized pieces that would be in private collections, museums, so on. And yes, what kind of market or information one has access to is a huge part of this. So it seems what I'm drawn to then in particular would be commoner pots as well as just certain thicker forms and shapes, which there seems to be a good amount of overlap with but can also come from two very different places and not necessarily have anything to do with each other. I was very much going on gut feeling here. I don't want to form a historically mis-informed opinion here so this kind of info is very helpful and important.

I think some of where I was coming from with this is this idea of elegance tending quite often to mean thin, delicate, highly detailed... and while this can be a part of it for me this is far from the be all end all of elegance, or at least what I would consider as such. Translation as well as marketing speak with these kinds of aesthetic descriptions is obviously also a huge factor which we shouldn't take for granted and makes matters only more tricky when already discussing something so highly subjective. Especially around a term like 'elegant' - what someone else finds elegant (typically meaning it just looks expensive) I might find cheap and tacky or a tasteless idea of what refinement is when it can supposedly be purchased.

I have particular aesthetic leanings that in ceramics at least tend to favor what I suppose would be categorized as wabi sabi, but I'm reluctant to use the term most of the time since I don't feel I have a deep enough cultural context or experience to feel I use the term totally correctly or full understand it enough other than westerner's loving to call everything that has some obvious deformation or imperfection as "wabi sabi". Reproduction or intentional production of such a thing is even more difficult to describe I think- whether it can actually even be done or not, and how to exactly talk about the difference between two instances of something when one is good and one is bad. As an artist I favor highly minimal and reductive work, and while I take no issue with industrially produced work and enjoy it and appreciate it as its own type of craftsmanship and artistry (Judd for example), seeing some aspect of wear, minor error, variation, or the artist's hand is even more appealing for me thought, especially in that context. Maybe this has to do with being raised by someone who worked as a craftsman. I feel like I'm always sort of chasing that fine line- where something has just enough error or variation or hand showing, but not so much as for it to look sloppy, and not so clean as to look like it could just be a CAD print-out. From my own experience I can say its damn near impossible to do consciously and get it right- sometimes the thing just works and happens, but if you try and force it (whatever it is, I still can't say) it is pretty much guaranteed to look wrong or faked, and at least to me its usually very obvious when someone else does this. Whether in my work or in an object, painting, piece of clothing, functional thing, all I still can do is say whether something has it or not, as in it possesses the correct combination of such properties for my particular taste.

But again an objects functionality over pure aesthetic appreciation adds another level. I have some vintage chairs I adore I picked up over the years of scouring flea markets and pieced together as a set- the old wood is worn, discolored, shows years of rough use, has a form that you just don't see now... and guess what- they are are not very comfortable. Are they bad chairs then?
User avatar
mbanu
Posts: 962
Joined: Fri May 03, 2019 3:45 pm

Sat May 08, 2021 10:27 am

I've read that this was part of the initial appeal of Yixing -- it was sort of the hipster choice originally, as although the literati were of the same social standing as the officials who used porcelain, choosing the more rustic Yixing showed a difference in lifestyle goals. However, in order to translate inspiring notions into reality there has to be a baseline level of skill, otherwise that country-life Yixing pot with their favorite song lyric engraved on the bottom would be remembered as the distractingly drippy pot with illegible marks on the bottom. :D

I do wonder about why it is that given this feeling a Chinese "wabi sabi" didn't develop around Yixing pots, though.
User avatar
Bok
Vendor
Posts: 5782
Joined: Wed Oct 04, 2017 8:55 am
Location: Taiwan

Sat May 08, 2021 10:36 am

@mbanu did wabi sabi develop anywhere else in Chinese culture? (Not counting recent developments). I think it’s been a particular Japanese phenomenon since early times.

As far as understand it, Yixing has also never been a truly commoner thing. Maybe not as elevated as the imperial courts, but still a luxury only the literati with no pressing survival issues as most normal people, could enjoy and afford.
User avatar
LeoFox
Posts: 1777
Joined: Tue Sep 01, 2020 4:01 pm
Location: Washington DC

Sat May 08, 2021 10:48 am

Gong chun pot is supposed to be wabi sabi i thought


Hahaha, I have to say I was pretty tea drunk last night on this nice rougui while writing some of that stuff above
Attachments
IMG_20210507_220027_207.jpg
IMG_20210507_220027_207.jpg (97.04 KiB) Viewed 3332 times
User avatar
mbanu
Posts: 962
Joined: Fri May 03, 2019 3:45 pm

Sat May 08, 2021 11:28 am

Bok wrote:
Sat May 08, 2021 10:36 am
mbanu did wabi sabi develop anywhere else in Chinese culture? (Not counting recent developments). I think it’s been a particular Japanese phenomenon since early times.

As far as understand it, Yixing has also never been a truly commoner thing. Maybe not as elevated as the imperial courts, but still a luxury only the literati with no pressing survival issues as most normal people, could enjoy and afford.
I am relying on my poor understanding of Geoffrey Gowlland here, but supposedly commoner-Yixing was called "cutao", while Yixing proper was "xitao". Cutao used a wooden model to mold the pot.
User avatar
Youzi
Posts: 533
Joined: Tue Sep 24, 2019 1:03 pm
Location: Shaxi, Yunnan, China
Contact:

Sat May 08, 2021 11:51 am

Bok wrote:
Sat May 08, 2021 10:36 am
mbanu did wabi sabi develop anywhere else in Chinese culture? (Not counting recent developments). I think it’s been a particular Japanese phenomenon since early times.

As far as understand it, Yixing has also never been a truly commoner thing. Maybe not as elevated as the imperial courts, but still a luxury only the literati with no pressing survival issues as most normal people, could enjoy and afford.
I've got the same view too. Even other Chinese art forms, are all about nature, elegance and harmony in general, and feeling. Like paintings and calligraphy. Yixing teapots were the same too, always. One should just look at Gu Jingzhou's boik about historical zisha teapots, starting from Shi Dabin the goal was always elegance and harmony and lines, etc.

The only kind of wabi Sabi is the Gongchun teapot.
User avatar
Youzi
Posts: 533
Joined: Tue Sep 24, 2019 1:03 pm
Location: Shaxi, Yunnan, China
Contact:

Sat May 08, 2021 11:55 am

LeoFox wrote:
Sat May 08, 2021 10:48 am
Gong chun pot is supposed to be wabi sabi i thought

Hahaha, I have to say I was pretty tea drunk last night on this nice rougui while writing some of that stuff above
Image
Nowadays Gongchun is wabi Sabi, but if you look at it from a historical perspective and consider it's legend. It's more than likely just a sloppy teapot pot together by a novice who were trying to make something from local clay.
User avatar
LeoFox
Posts: 1777
Joined: Tue Sep 01, 2020 4:01 pm
Location: Washington DC

Sat May 08, 2021 12:06 pm

Youzi wrote:
Sat May 08, 2021 11:55 am
LeoFox wrote:
Sat May 08, 2021 10:48 am
Gong chun pot is supposed to be wabi sabi i thought

Hahaha, I have to say I was pretty tea drunk last night on this nice rougui while writing some of that stuff above
Image
Nowadays Gongchun is wabi Sabi, but if you look at it from a historical perspective and consider it's legend. It's more than likely just a sloppy teapot pot together by a novice who were trying to make something from local clay.
That sounds exactly like wabi sabi to me. The newer gong chun pots look pretty kitschy
Post Reply