sky colour

One of Tarragon's beautiful tea bowls.

Plate and a Haiku

When shadows are long/ Dim is the day/ In the valley of dawn

My haiku are always in translation so they rarely meet the traditional syllable requirements.

Set of Coffee Bowls

Two thrown and constructed coffee bowls. 9 or 10 cm x 12 cm in diameter.

Made with a black clay/crank mix with porcelain.

--

http://tarragonsmith.com/

Korean Tea Bowl

White slip and glaze over black clay.

--

http://tarragonsmith.com/

Two Porcelain Cups

Tarragon has been channeling the teahouse aesthetic:

Black slip on the one on the left.

Both approximately 6cm high, 8cm wide and the foot 4cm across.

--

http://tarragonsmith.com/

Sake Jug and Four Sake Cups

One of them with Sake in it - it's use-value has greatly increased over the past five minutes.

At the Raku Museum, in Kyoto, they have one handling session a month, where you can do just that, handle the precious tea bowls made by the various generations of the Raku family.

Of course they don't bring them all out but potentially a bowl such as Human Soul in the Shape of a Demon might sit in its pristine vitrine thinking to itself, "364 days don't seem to mean that much when I've got one day, to eclipse them all...." If I may quote a song by the erstwhile one-man band, Documentary Films.

--

http://tarragonsmith.com/

Dark Side of the Moon Jar

Since the 17th century, the moon jar has stood out as the most distinctive and beautiful of traditional Korean pottery forms. Lately Tarragon has been working on Dark Side of the Moon Jars. These are fresh from the kiln:

http://tarragonsmith.com/

Sake cups, part two...

What do we want from ceramics? "A degree of dimness, absolute cleanliness, and quiet so complete one can hear the hum of a mosquito."
So said Junichiro Tanizaki. Of course, he was talking about toilets - but then, porcelain is a kind of ceramic itself.
I think the dimness is important. Things that are shiny do not encourage contemplation, which is the opposite of hypnotism. You need a bit of grain or spot to concentrate the attention. A bit of patina to make it look serious.
Of course, as Tanizaki says, the sheen of patina is only the glow of grime. All those oils left by fingers and more fingers. It's how cups should look maybe, until eventually the grime is indistinguishable from a lustrous polish.

Junichiro Tanizaki took a break in 1933 from writing about sexual obsessions to give us a short essay on aesthetics, In Praise of Shadows. The title sums up the contents.

Tarragon made these sake cups in a studio in London, England. You can see others here.

tarragonsmith.com

New sake cups

tarragonsmith.com

Communist Block Vodka cups

Something new for the New Year: Tarragon gives us a set of vodka cups, handmade to evoke the crumbling ruins of the late Soviet era.

It is to be hoped that he will later make something based on the modernist highlights of the same architecture.

I haven't tested them with real vodka yet. Will they work better than the House of the Soviets? We can hope.