Furutani Pottery: The Edge and the Foot

Two details do most of the work in Furutani Pottery: what happens at the outer edge of a piece, and what happens underneath it. Neither shows up well in a photograph taken from directly above, which is exactly why they are worth explaining.

An edge that is not a circle

The deep plate above has a lobed edge — the rim pushed into a series of soft scallops rather than left as a true circle — and a wall of 2cm. A lobed edge does something specific for food. A circular rim draws the eye around and around with nowhere to stop. A lobed one divides the perimeter into sections, so a portion placed inside reads as arranged even when you simply set it down.

The glaze is iron-speckled: dark flecks scattered through a lighter ground. The practical value of a speckle is that it hides use. A plain pale surface shows every mark from a knife. A speckled one absorbs them into the pattern it already has, which is why this finish survives being a plate you actually eat from.

The same idea taken further

Push that thinking further and the outline stops being a circle at all. The plate below is 15cm across with a 2.5cm wall, shaped as a chrysanthemum, finished in a rust glaze that pools darker in the recesses.

Pooling is the part worth understanding. Where the surface dips, the coating gathers and fires darker; where it stands proud, it thins and fires lighter. So the shape of the vessel draws itself in the glaze, without anyone painting a line. That is why a piece like this looks different under a window than it does under a lamp.

What a raised foot changes

Now turn something over. The bowl below is 6.9cm deep, gray-glazed and lobed like the first plate, and it stands on a distinct foot rather than sitting flat.

Three things follow. The base touches the table at a narrow ring, so less heat passes into the surface underneath. Your fingers have somewhere to go when lifting a full bowl, which matters at 6.9cm depth. And the bowl casts a shadow under itself, which is what makes a heavy ceramic form look lifted rather than planted.

Gray is the quietest of the three finishes here and the most useful. It sits beside both the rust and the speckled pieces without any of them arguing, so it is the natural third purchase if you already own something with colour in it.

Reading the dimensions

Round pieces here are given as width and wall height. Some forms carry three figures instead, and the third number is the one to read first: at 1.5cm you are holding a surface, at 2.2cm something that will contain a little liquid, and once the third figure approaches the second you are looking at a standing form rather than a plate at all.

Where to start

The Furutani Pottery collection shows the edges and the feet in one view. For a first piece, a small rust-glazed plate is the easiest way to see how the rust colour sits on a plain outline, and a gray-glazed flat plate shows the same clay with the colour taken out of the conversation.