Namban mizusashi (Namban water jar with lid), Kabasawa Kenji

Exhibition Label:
"Contemporary Ceramics East and West," Feb-2002, Susan Earle, Mary M. Dusenbury
This simple and stalwart mizusashi or water jar, like much of Kawasawa’s work, was produced for the tea ceremony. Kawasawa uses a traditional wood-fired climbing kiln (noborigama), a kiln designed with a series of interior chambers and built on a hill so that heat from the fire rises through the kiln. The fire is stoked first from the front and then from side openings in each chamber. In 1986 he built a more primitive type of climbing kiln, a jigama or hebigama (snake kiln), so named because it looks like a snake crawling up the hillside on which it is built. His most striking work, like this Namban Water Jar, consists of sober, unglazed objects, fired to a high temperature in one of his wood-fired climbing kilns.