Saishoku Bizen Guinomi — Dragonfly Motif
Abe Anjin
Bizen stoneware with kiln effects, coloured decoration and gold
Reference JPN-HIS-005
About the work
A vividly coloured Bizen sake cup by Abe Anjin, where the dark, fire-transformed stoneware surface becomes a ground for a boldly rendered dragonfly. Gold, black and warm ochre accents contrast with the raw character of the Bizen body, merging ancient ceramic materiality with an unexpectedly painterly contemporary language.
Detail
This guinomi belongs to Abe Anjin's distinctive Saishoku Bizen language, in which the austere earth and fire of traditional Bizen stoneware combine with intense colour and pictorial intervention. Against a dark brown-black ceramic body, a dragonfly motif is built from black line and brilliant gold rather than functioning as conventional surface decoration — the image interacts directly with the irregularities of the fired clay, and areas of ochre and ash-like deposition remain visible around it, so the history of the firing coexists with the later pictorial layer. The dragonfly's elongated body and angular legs cross the curved surface of the cup, turning a small sake vessel into a three-dimensional image that changes as it is rotated in the hand. The work demonstrates one of the more striking contradictions in Abe's practice: an object rooted in the physical severity of Bizen ware can, at the same time, function as a highly expressive contemporary painting in miniature.
About the series
Abe Anjin's Saishoku Bizen combines the austere, fire-transformed materiality of traditional Bizen ware with pictorial intervention, letting motif and kiln-marked surface read as two connected rather than competing languages.
