15x13x4.5 Inch Yamaaki Oval Bonsai Pot #48 – Worm Eaten Texture, Unglazed, Double Chop & Nail Signed

An unglazed oval from the Yamaaki kiln, and an unusually worked one. It is a rinka oval, meaning the rim is finished in a repeating scalloped pattern rather than left plain, and that rim also carries the worm-eaten mushikui carving the kiln is known for. Mushikui is cut by hand to look as though weather and insects have been at the clay for years, which is exactly the intent. A bonsai is meant to read as old, and a pot that already looks weathered lets a young tree borrow some of that age.

The feet are the detail that makes this one hard to forget. They are carved as gargoyles. Between those, the scalloped rim and the mushikui, there is more hand work on this pot than on most of the kiln's output, and it has come through in condition that heavily carved surfaces usually do not. It is thick-walled and well balanced. It carries a double chop alongside a nail signature, the chops pressed seals repeated across the kiln's work, the nail signature scratched in by hand while the clay was leather-hard.

At 15 by 13 inches and 4.5 inches deep this is a large pot with real root volume. That depth suits a tree whose root system is developed rather than one still filling out, and the oval softens the mass of a heavy trunk. Unglazed clay of this kind darkens and takes patina over years of watering, which only deepens a surface already carved to look weathered.