I didn't know that I liked peaches until I was in my thirties. I grew up thinking that peaches were syrupy and came in a can or that they were kind of hard and tasted like water. The first time I ate a perfectly ripe peach was in my friend Fiona’s home in Burgundy, France and I was struck by the beautiful balance of tart and sweet. And the succulence. I got it - finally. The same is true about tomatoes. I didn't know that fragrant, ripe tomatoes could be magical. I knew they were technically fruit but I didn't know they could taste like fruit. When I lived in Long Beach I used to go to a Japanese restaurant in Torrance that served a tomato salad dressed with soy sauce and sprinkled with a little grated celery. I could be wrong, but I think the tomatoes were served in a tenmoku-glazed bowl. I associate that restaurant with the black/bronze gleam of tenmoku.
When I made these bowls I didn't intend for them to be peach bowls per se. I was just trying to make bowls. I made them in late winter using black clay. One is glazed in tenmoku which is well suited to black clay. The other bowl is glazed with shino, quite thickly to allow the crawling patterns to occur. I think their hard, dark surfaces compliment the orange-red-fuzziness. As the tenmoku bowl is smaller I think it would be perfect to hold cherries as well or maybe a few satsumas in winter.
No comments:
Post a Comment