Sake bottle 1934 - 1966

This sake bottle, now residing at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, was crafted by Yu Fujiwara. Imagine the artist's hands at the wheel, coaxing and forming the clay, the vessel emerging, shifting, and evolving through trial, error, and intuition. Fujiwara’s fingerprints seem almost embedded in the clay, which has a beautiful, weathered texture, like tree bark. The colour is dark, like iron. I sympathize with the artist. The stakes are high when you’re working with something so fragile. What might he have been thinking as he worked? Was he struggling to get the shape just right? The gesture is one of containment. The surface of the work speaks volumes. The sake bottle is in conversation with other artists who work with clay. It is a conversation between past and present, between different techniques and aesthetic visions, a conversation, really, about how to translate the world into new forms.