Shell Series — Vase — Shinya Tanoue
Shinya Tanoue
Shell Series · Stoneware, slip and blue glaze
Reference JPN-BLU-009
About the work
Another vase within Shinya Tanoue's Shell Series, this piece foregrounds surface treatment over silhouette. Its exterior carries the series' dense, radiating incised lines, built up through repeated carving and scraping into a restrained, matte skin, while the interior — visible at the rim — is finished in the same luminous blue glaze that runs through the group.
Detail
This vase is part of Shinya Tanoue's Shell Series, and its identity is carried largely by surface rather than silhouette. The exterior is hand-built and then worked through repeated carving and scraping, building up the dense, radiating incised lines that define the series' outer skin — a restrained, matte surface closer to shell or husk than conventional ceramic decoration. That worked exterior is set directly against a luminous blue glaze on the interior, applied so that colour and light are held inside the form rather than displayed across it. The material contrast is the point: a closed, textured stoneware body against an open field of saturated glaze, echoing Tanoue's use of eggshells, seashells and seed husks as models for forms that contain and protect while remaining open to what happens within. Within a series that ranges from large sculptural vessels to small cups, this vase keeps that material dialogue between carved exterior and glazed interior close to the surface.
About the series
Across the Shell Series, Tanoue treats the shell — egg, seashell or seed husk — as a form that protects while remaining open to transformation; here that idea is carried especially by the material contrast between a carved, matte exterior and a luminous glazed interior.
