Cup (yunomi) c. early 21th century

This cup, or yunomi, by Mori Seishi at the Minneapolis Institute of Art is a great object! I like to imagine the artist’s hands working the clay, pushing and pulling, trying, failing, and trying again to coax this thing into being. There’s a rawness to it; a real sense of the hand. Look at those horizontal grooves—did the artist make them with a tool, or just their fingers? What about the diagonal slash running down the side, like a scar? It’s these imperfections that give the cup so much life. The colors, too, feel so earthy—browns and greens mingling together, as if the cup had just been pulled from the earth. The artist has left the mark of their hand on this object, and it tells a story about process, labor, and intention.