13x8.5x4.5 Inch Gyouzan Rectangle Bonsai Pot #403 – Unconventional Form, Unglazed, Nail Signed

This is the Gyouzan pot that explains the others. The kiln turned out traditional rectangles and ovals, but it is remembered for shapes that refuse to resolve the way a trained eye expects: lines that lean, silhouettes that look almost accidental, forms awkward in the way a piece of driftwood is awkward and poetic in the same breath. Nobody knows why. There was no manifesto and no interview, just a potter in a mountain kiln making the shape he wanted to make. This is one of those pots, irregular enough that nothing else in the catalogue looks like it.

It is nail signed, which on a Gyouzan is the line between the kiln's production pots and the pieces the potter built by hand. On something this idiosyncratic the mark matters more than usual, because the form alone tells you somebody was making decisions rather than filling an order.

At 13 by 8.5 inches and 4.5 inches deep it is narrow for its length and unusually deep for its width. That suits a tree with its own asymmetry, a slanting trunk or collected material with movement in it, rather than a formal upright looking for a symmetrical frame. The unglazed clay will darken with watering and take patina over the years, which flatters an irregular form more than a clean one.