Matthias Kaiser – Blue Chawan

A bowl with an expressively undulating rim, resulting from working with very soft clay. Here the clay body is covered with a white engobe (a thin layer of porcelain, so to speak) and carries a celadon glaze with a small proportion of cobalt for blue colouring. Limonite grains in the clay melt through the glaze and create dark speckles. Around the base, the bowl was supported during firing with shells and fireclay wadding. The marks and discolourations from the burnt shell lime are visible and create an interesting landscape in the area around the foot.

Matthias Kaiser’s matcha bowls are one-of-a-kind pieces and therefore have collector’s value.

Matcha chawan are tea bowls for green powdered tea (matcha). The tea is whisked directly in the bowl with a bamboo whisk and then drunk from it. The bowls are functional sculptures. Many details are carefully considered in their making, details that usually only reveal themselves after a longer engagement with the culture of tea drinking. The choice of clay body and glaze materials is significant, as are the timing of the forming process, the nuances of the form, the gesture of the making, the tools used and the traces they leave, and not least the firing.
Matthias Kaiser trained as a potter in Japan and regularly exhibits his work there as well. These tea bowls reflect his more than 30 years of working with these forms.

All bowls are made from an unrefined, natural clay from the Czech Republic, which Matthias Kaiser prepares himself in his studio for use. This clay has a high iron content and contains natural deposits of quartz and limonite that give the surfaces a distinctive character.