Seihakuji Gourd-Shaped Vase by Takeaki KAWASE

The vase is a modern abstraction of the double gourd. A wide, low lower body spreads out like a broad disc, its upper surface sloping gently down to a crisp, slightly upturned edge. From its centre, a pinched waist rises to a small conical upper section that closes in a narrow mouth. Both sections are turned with great precision, and the play between the broad lower form and the compact upper one gives the piece a poised, almost architectural balance. The whole is covered in a pale ice-blue seihakuji glaze. It pools softly in the recesses and thins to white at the edges, where the porcelain body shows through. The vase stands on a small, neatly cut foot ring, and the signature is incised in the centre of the base under the glaze. It comes with its tomobako, inscribed Seihakuji Hyo-tsubo (Bluish-White Porcelain Gourd Jar) and signed and sealed, together with its yellow cloth wrapper and the artist's printed chronology.

KAWASE Takeaki was born in 1958 in Gojozaka, the historic potters' quarter of Kyoto, into the Kawase family of porcelain makers. His grandfather was Kawase Chikushun I (1894– 1983), and his father, the potter Kawase Mitsuyuki (born 1933), was Chikushun I's second son and a full member of the Japan Kogei Association. Takeaki graduated from the Kyoto Prefectural Ceramics Training School in 1979 and completed the ceramics course at the Kyoto Municipal Industrial Research Institute in 1980, before training under his father. From 1981 his work was accepted at the Japan Traditional Kogei Kinki Exhibition every year. In 1984 he was first accepted at the national Japan Traditional Kogei Exhibition, where he was selected again in 1994, 1995, 1997, 1998 and 2000. In 1985 father and son held a joint exhibition at Mitsukoshi in Osaka, and he received the Japan Kogei Association Kinki Branch Chairman's Prize. He later built his own kiln at Nishi-Hira in Shiga Prefecture. He has held solo exhibitions at Mitsukoshi in Tokyo, Osaka and Nagoya, at Kuroda Toen in Ginza and at Takashimaya in Kyoto. He received the Kinki Branch Encouragement Prize in 1993 and the Matsushita Konosuke Memorial Prize in 1997. That same year he became a full member of the Japan Kogei Association.