Very Large Sculptural Oribe Form
Makoto Yamaguchi
Stoneware with layered Oribe glazes
Reference JPN-BRI-003
About the work
Makoto Yamaguchi radically expands the language of Oribe in this monumental sculptural stoneware form. Layers of emerald green, turquoise, deep blue and near-black glaze descend across a heavily articulated vertical surface, transforming the vessel into something closer to a geological formation than conventional pottery.
Detail
Makoto Yamaguchi's Very Large Sculptural Oribe Form pushes the historic language of Oribe ceramics beyond the scale and conventions of functional pottery. The work rises as a broad, vertical stoneware mass before opening outward toward an irregular, dramatically expanded rim; its silhouette keeps the memory of a vessel, while proportion, scale and surface treatment shift the object decisively toward sculpture. Dense layers of Oribe glaze move vertically down the body in emerald green, turquoise, blue-green, deep blue and almost black passages, some areas remaining dark and restrained, others accumulating into thick, glossy flows and raised deposits — colour appears to descend through the form like water through rock or liquid moving through geological strata, reshaping rather than simply decorating the surface beneath it. Yamaguchi's approach stays connected to Oribe's history without reproducing it literally: the expressive asymmetry historically associated with the tradition becomes a starting point for a far larger, more monumental contemporary language, so that at this scale the vessel is encountered through the body as much as through use.
About the series
In Yamaguchi's work, Oribe is no longer simply a glaze or historical style but a landscape: the vessel provides the underlying architecture, while glaze introduces movement, depth and the impression of slow geological transformation across its surface.