A yunomi (tea cup) which stabs your hand bleeding.

— Start with a tea cup made by Mr. Yuichi Inoue

In October of 1992, Mr. Unagami Masaomi hosted my first ceramic art exhibition at the UNAKU Art Salon in Tokyo. At the exhibition there were many Yuichi Inoue calligraphy works above my ceramic works. I never expected that Mr. Unagami Masaomi would display Yuichi Inoue’s calligraphy with a young man’s work such as mine (Mr. Unagami Masaomi curated my exhibition as The Youth Porcelain Exhibition). Each of Yuichi Inoe’s works had a single character called ‘Ai’ (Love). Back then, I was completely moved. Yuichi Inoue’s calligraphy ‘Love’ is strong, and sometimes incomplete, but it contains intense emotions that I had hardly seen or experienced before. Calligraphy can do this! That is why I named my daughter Aiya.

Pottery, like calligraphy, has an ancient history of thousands of years in the making. In an effort to create more usable and aesthetically pleasing artefacts, humans have reached near-perfect craftsmanship. In the Qing dynasty, ceramics could imitate various other materials, such as bronze, wood, lacquer and jade. All of these complicated craftsmanship skills depended on the traditions of our ancestors’ evolution of the art. We take immense pride in, and hold the highest regard for, these traditions and serve as conservators for the generations to come. However, artistry does not stop here. One should move from past achievements to evoke spiritual excitement and true expressions of emotion. For example, if the ceramic material is regarded as a bull with a huge body, it will follow the child who cares for it in a docile manner. The key is the bull nose ring, which is tradition. Over time, people tend to ignore the malevolent nature of the beast, and even forget that they are still bulls. Without the bull nose ring, the true nature of the bull will make it difficult to tame, and instead, a dialogue and fusion would have to take place. I think this would move me, triggering emotions such as the joy of driving the bull, the joy of talking to it, and the pain of failure.

Around 2006, when Mr. Unagami Masaomi came to Beijing to participate in my exhibition, he gave me a ceramic yunomi, a tea cup, made by Yuichi Inoue. It was a rough, bitter cup with an edge on one side. Mr. Unagami Masaomi said that what he (Yuichi Inoue) wanted was the feeling of almost bleeding from a thorn in his hand. I held this cup and let the sharp edge pierce my palm. I felt the strong character of ceramics, which is the essential language that everyone has long forgotten.

By Gao Zhenyu