Japanese-Style Stoneware Urn From Studio Potter Tel Turnbull (France)

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A remarkable lidded stoneware vessel, possibly intended as a cremation urn, features a lustrous, copper-tone glaze with patches of greenish-gray. … Read more A remarkable lidded stoneware vessel, possibly intended as a cremation urn, features a lustrous, copper-tone glaze with patches of greenish-gray. The bulbous lower body, with its four small, curled feet and cylindrical neck, gives it a unique, stable form. The cipher of contemporary Anglo-French studio potter Terence “Tel“ Turnbull (b. 1949) is present on the base. The craftsmanship and glaze are exquisite!

The rich chocolate brown and the mottled “drip“ effect result from a natural ash glaze process, manifesting the artist’s modern interpretation of Japanese TAMBA ware. The finish was achieved in Turnbull’s high-firing, Japanese-style cave kiln (anagama), wherein wood ash settles and reacts with the iron in the clay to create organic, irreplicable patterns. Such rustic, earthy tones and the wabi-sabi aesthetic (appreciating beauty that is “imperfect, impermanent, and incomplete”) are both highly valued in Japanese culture.

TAMBA-TACHIKUI WARE is a type of traditional Japanese pottery with a history spanning over 800 years. Produced in the mountainous area of the Sasayama and Tachikui districts of Hyōgo Prefecture, it is counted among the Six Ancient Kilns of Japan (六古窯 Rokkoyō), a category developed in 1948 by influential potter and ceramics scholar Koyama Fujio (1900–1975). While coined in emulation of the Five Great Kilns of Song China, which represent specific locations renowned for imperial-grade porcelain, the Japanese kilns are best thought of as six different styles of traditional pottery, produced at numerous actual kiln sites within particular regions. Note that the styles associated with at least four of the kilns (TAMBA among them) evolved and adapted to varying degrees, so analogizing among them is difficult. Unlike the Five Great Kilns of China, their Japanese counterparts continue to produce to the present day.

As noted, no single fixed style for TAMBA ware exists; instead, it encompasses a wide array of items and finishes, including unglazed pieces and those with a variety of ash and iron glazes. Common techniques, such as the use of left-rotating potter’s wheels and the natural ash glaze produced in wood-fired climbing kilns—both technologies introduced by Korean potters in the late 16th and early 17th centuries in the aftermath of Japanese invasions—link the work of the region’s potters into a shared heritage. See less