Kenzan ceramics demystified. (Current and Coming).(Ogata Kenzan pottery)(Brief Article)

One of the most daunting puzzles in the world of Japanese ceramics revolves around work associated with the celebrated potter Ogata Shinsei, more commonly known as Ogata Kenzan. Even the basic fact that he was not just an individual artisan, but also the designer and producer of a brand of pottery has been obscured over time. His work has been revered almost continuously since his death, so it is not surprising that there are pieces made in the manner of Kenzan, replicas made in the nineteenth century when his work was revived, and outright fakes. If that were not enough, some of the documents that have for years been mined for factual data concerning his life and work, are spurious.

In the late 1890s, when Edward S. Morse traveled to Detroit to examine the collection of Japanese ceramics assembled by Charles Lang Freer, he wrote about the piece illustrated at the far right "May be Tokyo--Kenzan (?). After the style of Kenzan. Oh, damn these things!" Just as Morse was confounded and frustrated, later scholars have tended to shy away from this minefield, and Kenzan ceramics have not been systematically classified by type or date. Recently an exhibition and its excellent and lucidly written catalogue by Richard L. Wilson (with contributions by Saeko Ogasawara) have done much to sort out the problems associated with this field.

Freer had a passion for these extraordinarily beautiful ceramics, and his collection, now housed in the Freer Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., contains the largest assemblage of Kenzan wares outside Japan, thereby providing a model group to study. The exhibition, at the Freer Gallery until October 27, is entitled The Potter's Brush: The Kenzan Style in Japanese Ceramics. It contains ten objects by Kenzan himself and nearly ninety produced after his death, including pieces made by Ogata Ihachi, his adopted son and chosen successor. Some of the objects on view have been subjected to scientific analysis, which is the first time these wares have been so treated.

Kenzan, born Ogata Gonpei Koremitsu, was the son of a textile merchant and was raised in an affluent family. He was the younger brother of Korin, one of the most celebrated painters in the history of Japanese art and after whom the Rimpa style of painting is named. At the time of his father's death in 1687, Kenzan ...