Newsletter No. 9 Kofuku Chawan - Yui Tsujimura

Being born as a son of the regend potter, Shiro Tsujimura, Yui Tsujimura is grown up surrounded by pottery from his early age. He started his career as potter just after the high-school. He was impressed by the beauty of his father's work with Shizen-yu (natural glazing using ash of woods). Since then, he has been pursuing his way of Shizen-yu.

Being based in Nara, he works for the exhibitions in the different galleries in Japan. As I inform him my request that I would like to have Chawan (tea cup) for Matcha for casual Matcha-drinker, he recommended Kofuku Chawan, which is little smaller than one normally used for the formal tea ceremony.

He creates around 1000 pieces of ceramic per year.
For the most of potters, Chawan is the one of very challenging item: for example, it's already good, when he can make one Chawan out of 10 pieces, which he can be truly satisfied with, whereas at the other items 7 to 8 pieces out of 10. It directly shows the skill and the character of the potter, therefore, Chawan is positioned at one level higher as an item.

Tatazumai

Tatazumai is the word to describe the appearance of how this object ''sits'' in the space. If Tatazumai is correctly expressed, people feel like touching and allowing it to put on their lip. Chawan is a kind of item which directly talks to the perception and he takes Tatazumai most into account during making.

Whenever Mr. Tsujimura and I open up our conversation, we start describing how the leaves and trees are now like, how cheerful the birds are singing, and how the colours of mountain is like. Nature keeps going on each season in the similar way in Japan and Switzerland. It has became more important to put our focus on something beautiful and something harmonised as the world is a reflection of our mind.

For him the space of freedom is very important in many aspects of life to keep his creation fresh: for example, he makes Chawan for the formal tea ceremony too, but he himself doesn't practice it and never will. As he feels, if he put himself into the world of where there are so many rules, the capacity of creation would be narrowed.

Even if the owner of his cup uses it for the other purpose apart from the tea, for example, for the pickles or dessert, that is also fully ok, rather preferable, he mentioned. There is no rule. He uses it at home also for the pickles :-)

He is not very willing to talk about himself - he wishes each owner of his cup feeling freely about himself from the touch and appearance, as it tells everything by itself and what each feels is a truth.

For any question regarding his work, please contact at anytime.

Thank you very much and kind regards,
Ena