pot ID help?
Posted: Sat Apr 24, 2021 1:30 pm
My curiosity got the better of me so I picked this up recently. I couldn't stop staring at it and while I even initially disliked the knob on the top it grew on me as it started looking like a minaret, or a tulip or garlic bulb- so at this point then compulsion had clearly kicked in and I had to buy it even if it wound up being junk. For now it is named 'Onion Head'. What the pot actually is though is a mystery, maybe someone here can help shed some light on it?
Full disclosure I don't know that this pot is even Japanese, but its the hunch I'm going on for several reasons. It has no markings anywhere on the pot to help direct any of this unfortunately. But its stylized enough that I thought maybe someone might recognize the overall feel of it - maybe it was considered a second, or maybe is something made by a student? But for all I know it could also be from somewhere else. The orange-ish clay looked like it could have been modern Chaozhou and while its clearly hand thrown, CZ didn't make sense for many other reasons- to start at about 180ml it would be pretty big for a CZ pot, and probably also quite expensive being unblended modern CZ (and maybe not the right shade of red/orange) and didn't seem to make sense stylistically. I figure Japanese made in a Chinese influenced style is at least more likely - I feel like I've seen photos of some shudei that looks quite orange, and that this kind of rough dragged outside texture has been done by quite a few artists, but my knowledge in this area is very limited. Also the lid style of it sitting on a lip and having an air hole in the lid rather than the button leads me to think its Japanese. I'm afraid the color is actually quite difficult to capture.
Some parts of the workmanship seem significantly better than others, or rather others were intentionally left kind of rough - for example the spout is off-axis to the right, pot lid underside it kinda roughly done, fingernail mark inside the pot, underside of the spout, some cracking at the top of the handle... in contrast though its actually thrown quite thin, in comparison to anything else I own at least, especially at the bottom where the texturing isn't present, also the lip/top of the pot is very cleanly done. 9 hole filter in the body, clay feels very delicate and seems pretty porous. Gives a quiet fizz when hot water is poured in. Unfortunately its got a lot of that awful storage/thrift store type smell stuck in it so I'll have to do some delicate cleaning and airing out before testing out the clay itself- pours nice and fast though. Does the style look familiar to anyone? Am I way off base here?
Full disclosure I don't know that this pot is even Japanese, but its the hunch I'm going on for several reasons. It has no markings anywhere on the pot to help direct any of this unfortunately. But its stylized enough that I thought maybe someone might recognize the overall feel of it - maybe it was considered a second, or maybe is something made by a student? But for all I know it could also be from somewhere else. The orange-ish clay looked like it could have been modern Chaozhou and while its clearly hand thrown, CZ didn't make sense for many other reasons- to start at about 180ml it would be pretty big for a CZ pot, and probably also quite expensive being unblended modern CZ (and maybe not the right shade of red/orange) and didn't seem to make sense stylistically. I figure Japanese made in a Chinese influenced style is at least more likely - I feel like I've seen photos of some shudei that looks quite orange, and that this kind of rough dragged outside texture has been done by quite a few artists, but my knowledge in this area is very limited. Also the lid style of it sitting on a lip and having an air hole in the lid rather than the button leads me to think its Japanese. I'm afraid the color is actually quite difficult to capture.
Some parts of the workmanship seem significantly better than others, or rather others were intentionally left kind of rough - for example the spout is off-axis to the right, pot lid underside it kinda roughly done, fingernail mark inside the pot, underside of the spout, some cracking at the top of the handle... in contrast though its actually thrown quite thin, in comparison to anything else I own at least, especially at the bottom where the texturing isn't present, also the lip/top of the pot is very cleanly done. 9 hole filter in the body, clay feels very delicate and seems pretty porous. Gives a quiet fizz when hot water is poured in. Unfortunately its got a lot of that awful storage/thrift store type smell stuck in it so I'll have to do some delicate cleaning and airing out before testing out the clay itself- pours nice and fast though. Does the style look familiar to anyone? Am I way off base here?