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Notes on Blue
Note #5
Notes on Blue: Yoshikawa MasamichiYoshikawa Masamichi
Exploring contemporary celadonRead the full article hereYoshikawa’s process is both meticulous and time-intensive, yielding works that thoughtfully explore scale, proportion, and architectural form. Beginning with a solid block of porcelain, he carves sections and divisions using only his fingers, allowing the surface to evolve organically. The piece is then left to dry naturally for several months before undergoing firing and glazing. His signature seihakuji and seiji glazes (as exemplified in the Kahyo series) are especially thick, pooling and dripping along the contours of the work, collecting in expressive trails at the base.
The two pieces from his Kayho series above evokes the silhouettes of high-rise buildings, with their vertical, rectilinear forms interrupted by precise, clean-cut, contoured segments. Compared to other works in the series, these pieces lean more toward evoking the urban skyline than ancient archaeological sites, though the idea of small houses still resonates to the overarching theme of a tomb figurine. After shaping the porcelain clay, Yoshikawa impresses the surfaces with finger-made depressions that resemble windows. The regularity in the rows of these marks mirrors the uniform grid of windows in modern-day Tokyo’s high-rise architecture, reinforcing the urban feel of the works. The thick glaze settles into these marks, revealing a spectrum of blue hues that shift with its depth. Near the base, the icy blue gives way to subtle magenta, deep brown, and glints of gold. These colors emerge from the celadon glaze’s chemical reaction with copper and cobalt minerals present in the glaze matrix. At the foot of each piece, a deliberate incision suggests an entryway. A viewer may perhaps interpret it as the threshold of a building, a shaded passage cutting through its core, or perhaps a doorway to another world?
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