Monday 31 October 2016

Tea bowl



Tea bowl




at the Oxford Ceramics Gallery, Walton Street, Oxford.





The tea bowl, or chawan,  originated in China. The earliest tea bowls in Japan were imported from China between the 13th and the 16th centuries. By the end of the 14th century, as the custom of tea drinking spread throughout Japan tea bowls became desired objects by all ranks of society, and the Japanese began to make their own copies, preferring the bowls with a tapered shape. With the rise of the wabi tea ceremony a variety of Korean bowls, mainly used for rice in Korea, also became highly prized in Japan. They were favourites because of their rough simplicity. With time and the development of the Japanese tea ceremony as a distinct form, local ceramics got more expensive and more developed. Raku fired tea bowls were one of the most esteemed pieces for a tea ceremony.

'Tea is of a light colour and looks best in black cups. The cups made at Jianyang are bluish-black in colour, marked like the fur of a hare. Being of rather thick fabric they retain the heat, so that when once warmed through they cool very slowly, and they are additionally valued on this account', wrote one resident of the Fijian district.

This was a wonderful exhibition. The prices of the Japanese tea bowls were extremely high.



Anna Lambert (UK)





Anna Lambert (UK)




Tatsuzo Shimaoka (Japan)

The Japanese tea bowls were sold with stylish wooden boxes.



Wouter Dam (Netherlands)





Ashley Howard (UK)





Ashley Howard (UK)






looking in





Dan Kelly (UK)






On the mantelpiece were a series of tiny, tiny tea bowls, made by Yuta Segawa (UK), which you can see in the four photographs below:
















Ryoiji Koie (Japan), bowl with wooden box





Akiro Satake (USA)





Akiro Satake (USA)





Akiro Satake (USA)





Akiro Satake (USA)





Charles Bound (UK)





Charles Bound (UK)





Eddie Curtis (UK)




Eddie Curtis (UK)





looking closer at the rich texture





Eddie Curtis (UK)





Barry Stedman (UK)





Barry Stedman (UK)





Niisato Akio (Japan)




Shozo Michikawa (Japan)





looking in





Shozo Michikawa (Japan)





looking in






Shozo Michikawa (Japan)





Shozo Michikawa (Japan)





Shozo Michikawa (Japan)





and the box






Shozo Michikawa, (Japan)






Akiko Hirai (UK)




Gordon Crosby (UK)





Friday 28 October 2016

Rembrandt's first paintings



Rembrandt's first paintings, at the Ashmolean in Oxford.

The Senses are the earliest surviving works of Rembrandt van Rijn.

They were created around 1624-25 when Rembrandt was still a teenager. They are clearly the creations of a young artist who is still developing his own style but they already show great promise: bold use of bright colours, broad brushwork, an ability to capture human emotions, and an experimental treatment of light.

This is the first time that the four surviving panel paintings - depicting sight, hearing, smell and touch - have been on show together, after Smell was rediscovered in 2015. The thereabouts of Taste are currently unknown.

The five senses were a popular allegorical theme in the art of the Low Countries. Traditionally each was represented as a female figure, for instance an elegant woman holding a flower symbolised smell. Gradually the five senses were interpreted in a more moralising fashion, underlining that their excessive indulgence could result in sin. From the 17th century onwards the senses were depicted as genre scenes featuring debauched peasants, where drunkenness might represent taste and amorous couples embracing might symbolise touch. Rembrandt's Senses clearly belong to this later type and depict three half-length figures in constricted spaces, engaged in an activity related to the specific sense. Rembrandt also incorporated a subtle undertone of satire in each painting.




A Pedlar selling Spectacles (allegory of Sight), (oil on panel)

A pedlar carrying an open basket in which shiny pince-nez are displayed. A squinting woman is trying on one of the glasses as the street vendor hands another pair to the wrinkled man on the left. While this appears to be a simple genre scene, Rembrandt intended a double meaning as in Dutch 'selling someone glasses' also means 'deceiving someone'.

The shiny frames of the pince-nez and the glistening clasp of the pedlar's money pouch are conveyed with just the subtlest of light accents.



Three Singers (Allegory of Hearing), (oil on panel)

An elderly couple and their young son are singing together in a dimly lit room.  The father is beating time with his right hand. This seemingly straightforward domestic scene might suggest a deeper meaning as several Dutch proverbs compare the beautiful harmony produced by youthful singers to the unsteady voices of the elderly.

The two halves of the song book do not match in size, perhaps a sign of the immature Rembrandt struggling with perspective? However, other elements of the work demonstrate that the young Rembrandt was already a gifted painter: the textile of the turban worn by the woman is depicted convincingly while the man's white neckerchief is superbly rendered by just a few zigzags and the fur lining of the man's purple jacket seems almost tangible, despite being applied with just a few brush strokes.




Unconscious Patient (Allegory for Smell), (oil on panel)

A young man appears to have fainted and a woman holds a cloth with smelling salts under his nose in the hope of reviving him. The man's pale forearm suggests that his unconscious state might be due to a bloodletting procedure. The bearded man on the left is probably the barber-surgeon as his surgical instruments hang on the back wall. Rembrandt's earliest known signature is written on the drawing or print pinned to the cupboard at right: the Latin monogram RHF stands for 'Rembrandt, son of Harmen, made this'.

This panel was only recently discovered when it appeared at a small auction house in New Jersey in September 2015.





Stone Operation (Allegory of Touch), (oil on panel)

A barber-surgeon is operating on a man who is cringing with pain and clenching his fists as a lancet is inserted into his scalp. A craggy man with a hooked nose acts as the surgeon's assistant by holding a candle and a pouch with surgical instruments clipped onto his sleeve. This is probably a stone removal operation, often performed by quacks in order to relieve desperate patients from their headaches. Rembrandt again incorporated a double meaning in this scene as in Dutch 'cutting out a stone' could mean 'fooling someone'.

The young Rembrandt cleverly uses a candle as the sole light source in the room, and this casts deep shadows on the figures highlighting their wrinkled skin. Yet the men's hands are not skilfully defined and seem to lack finger joints, while the assistant is almost a caricature. Rembrandt may have used his father as a model for the portrait of the barber-surgeon.



Monday 24 October 2016

Sotis Philippides




Sotis Philippides at the Stour Gallery, Shipston-on-Stour.

My favourite piece at the June exhibition of the Stour Gallery was by Sotis Philippides, so I was very pleased to see that a whole room had been dedicated to his work in this current one. I love the simplicity of his vessels, and was amazed at how light they are.

I found this statement on his website:

'Philippides uses a clay from the hone of pottery - Stoke-on-Trent - that is very rough and textured, with fine, stone-like sand particles, but highly malleable. This allows him to achieve his characteristic fine yet textured finish. He fires his pots at 1,000oC and he can alter the surface appearance by scraping away the fine stones to reveal small indentations. Customers are always surprised by how light his ceramics are, but this is his intention. 'While I try to make my work as light and fine as possible', he says, 'I want it to appear heavy, as if it were made from another material, such as wood or stone'... Inspiration comes from many sources, but they are always organic. Current favourites include tree bark and black volcanic rock.

Although he has experimented with gloss finishes, he prefers matt glazes and natural oxides, such as copper and iron. His choice of colours reflects the objects of his inspiration: natural deep earthy-brown tones contrast with soft sky-blues, while charcoal-greys are teamed with chalky whites'.