Yoshiro Kimura
A vase for a single flower, Hekiyu Renmonki is perfectly balanced in form. It is striking for its perfection, for the smoothness of its surface, its flawless, shifting blue. An object of quiet beauty, it offers an eloquent expression of dedicated practice. Being grand in neither scale nor design, the vase’s studied simplicity draws the eye to the transparency of its glazes, which move from the bright cyan at its apex to a deep, royal blue at its base. It is the work of a master confident in his medium, a medium in which he has worked for the past half-century as a monk works at his mokushō, his silent illumination.
b.1946, Ehime Prefecture
Little is written on Yoshiro Kimura other than the barest of facts, which, collected together, appear as only a haiku of personhood. There is to his life the suggestion of mystery, with so much left absent in its retelling. But then perhaps his has been a life of singular mastery, a life spent at the throwing wheel. What is there then to tell but of the hours of studied patience? Kimura was to become a Zen monk but found himself drawn instead to the porcelain vessels used in traditional Japanese tea ceremonies. On visiting Greece as a young man, he fell in love with the Mediterranean blue of the Aegean Sea and returned to Japan to apprentice as a ceramicist. The blue never left him, its shade echoed in the aquamarine hekiyu glaze with which he has since worked. Using a decorative effect called renmon, he evokes the sea’s gentle movement, its shallows and its depth. Kimura works with slow, meditative precision, producing only a dozen or so vessels a year. He calls his porcelain objects 'tenrai' – beautiful poetry – each a compositional verse in blue.