Katsunori Sawa: Shigaraki

Last year, we asked Katsunori to focus exclusively on Oribe. This year, the focus is Shigaraki, as we present his seventh solo exhibition at our gallery.

We work with a particularly large number of artists who make Shigaraki and Iga ware, and each has a character entirely their own. These differences reveal themselves primarily in form, clay, and firing—but if you ask me to put those differences into words, that becomes rather difficult. So please come and see them for yourself.

After all, everything we write in exhibition announcements like this is inevitably written from the seller’s point of view. We hope you will take it simply as one piece of information, circumstances and all. (We don’t write anything untrue, of course.) In the end, the best thing is to see the actual works and hold them in your hands.

So, come to Asakusa!

That said, unless we manage to spark your interest and persuade you to visit, we won’t have much of a business—so allow me to write just a little more.

The works in this exhibition are formed from Shigaraki clay and fired in a wood-burning kiln. Even when the forms are similar, the firing creates an extraordinary variety of keshiki—literally “landscapes”—across their surfaces: hiiro (reddish-orange fire color), natural ash glaze, scorched surfaces, ishihaze (stone eruptions), mushikui (“insect-eaten” effects), and more.

Some of these effects can be deliberately encouraged to a certain extent; others cannot. Through careful placement and numerous other adjustments, the artist works to create a rich variety of landscapes in the kiln.

For example, if a tea bowl is placed face-down inside the kiln and receives a generous covering of natural ash glaze, a distinctive “dragonfly eye” may emerge on its front, as seen in Tea Bowl No. 1, creating an elegant and striking landscape. If a piece is placed where it receives just the right amount of ash during the firing, it may acquire a slightly moss-covered appearance, like Komainu No. 7.

There are countless other possibilities. Drawing upon years of experience and knowledge, the artist works with the fire to produce an astonishing range of expressions, even though every piece begins with the same Shigaraki clay.

And then there is chance. Sometimes the kiln produces a beautiful landscape that no one could ever have imagined beforehand.

By focusing exclusively on Shigaraki for this exhibition, we hope you will be able to look closely at these differences and enjoy the remarkable diversity that can emerge from a single material.

Of course, the quality of a work is determined not by the firing alone, but also by its making and its materials. We hope you will also enjoy the forms unique to Katsunori’s approach to Shigaraki, as well as the way each piece feels when held in the hands.