Page 413 - Art In The Age Of Exploration (Great Section on Chinese Art Ming Dynasty)

with iron oxides in the clay during its reduction
firing in the high, wood-fired, double-tunnel
kilns typical of Shigaraki manufacture. The cross-
hatched pattern incised between parallel lines
around the shoulder is typical of Shigaraki jars,
although the parallel lines are not always three
in number.
The high Shigaraki valley lies near the border
between Shiga and Mie prefectures, about thirty
kilometers northeast of Nara and some twenty
to twenty-five kilometers south of Lake Biwa.
Always famous for timber, the region became
a ceramic center at the end of the thirteenth cen-
tury, stimulated principally by influence from the
older kilns at Tokoname, south of Nagoya. A brief
period of political fame came to the town from
744 to 745, when the emperor Shomu chose it as
his new capital and built the Koga Palace there.
This palace, barely completed, was abandoned
because of ill omens and changing court politics.
Shigaraki, like others of the traditional "Six Old
Kilns" of medieval times (c. 1O5O-C. 1600), lim-
mouth to a line just below the shoulder, where a ter at about mid-height, then rounds inward to a ited its production almost wholly to jars (tsubo),
run breaks its otherwise even edge. A horizontal brief, constricted neck and slightly flared (dam- wide-mouthed containers (kame), and grater
groove circumscribes the unglazed body approxi- aged) mouth. It was made by adding coils of clay bowls (suribachi). Postwar studies and excavations
mately at midpoint, intersected by several evenly to the flat clay disk that formed the base, and have revealed many more than six old kilns, but
spaced incised vertical lines. The red-black surface smoothing the surface inside and out with a the term remains. Aside from domestic use as
of the clay blends attractively with the dark paddle of wood or bamboo. The clay is typical of storage, fermentation, and grinding implements,
glaze. From the shoulder to the cantilever, where the Shigaraki area, dark and rough and heavily the medieval ceramics were used as funerary jars
the torso is supported by a trim, narrow foot, sprinkled with white feldspar inclusions ranging for cremated remains and as offering containers
the vessel shows a slightly bulging cylindrical in size from granules to an occasional pebble. for Buddhist and Shinto rituals. The decorative
silhouette. High-temperature (approx. 1300° C) firing pro- motif at the shoulder has been, perhaps fancifully,
The cultivation of a heightened sensibility for duced a skin ranging in color from orange to cin- called both cypress-fence weave (higaki) and lotus
cha-ire by Japanese warriors constitutes one of the namon to a dark purplish hue. Areas of greenish petal, but is most widely known as rope pattern
more curious features of medieval aesthetic his- glaze formed on the upper part, where the wood (nawame). S.E.L.
tory. Cha-ire became a currency powerful all out ash used as a flux fell on the vessel and interacted
of proportion to their unassuming size. They
were cherished rewards for loyalty or battlefield
valor. Perhaps their intimate scale and subtle,
unobtrusive beauty functioned as the ultimate
corrective in a world of extreme danger and
uncertainty. In the calmer times of early Edo
(1615-1868) these diminutive vessels were appre-
ciated as elements in the Tea Ceremony in part for
the level of nuance added by their incongruous
heritage of violence. j.u.

26l
TSUBO STORAGE JAR

late i$th century
Japanese
Shigaraki ware: stoneware with ash glaze
1
height 42 fi6 /2J
reference: Cort 1979, 1981, 19—103, fig. 96
The Cleveland Museum of Art, John L.
Severance Fund

Large size and globular profile are the most
immediately striking characteristics of this storage
jar. From a flat base it swells to its widest diame-

412 CIRCA 1492