While both the particularly dusky, reddish/burnt orange shade and hue of this Ichi Kitahara bent Pot, and it's treatment of the partial rustication, strike me as rather more Danish than Japanese, there's no mistaking the efforts towards creating a balanced asymmetry that have gone into the shaping of the bowl, transition, and inner rim-bevel, an unmistakable Japanese element which Ichi would have learned at the hands of his teacher, Hiroyuki Tokutomi. The briar itself that he chose for this piece is lovely, sporting a true, if somewhat flickering, vertical grain, displaying quick little stokes that travel upward with very little of the wavering, and none of the wandering, that we associate with the more commonly-seen "flame grain". The birdseye covering the broad rim, smoldering, speckled, and smoky, is just the icing on the cake.
- Eric N. Squires
