green

a thesis of weaves and hallows

Beware of gnawing
the ideogram of nothingness:
Your teeth will crack. Swallow it whole, and you’ve a treasure
Beyond the hope of Buddha and the Mind. The east breeze
Fondles the horse’s ears:
how sweet the smell of plum.

Karasumaru-Mitsuhiro (1579-1638) 1

PINE

The first night at the monastery,
a moth lit on my sleeve by firelight,
long after the first frost.

A short stick of incense burns
thirty minutes, fresh thread of pine
rising through the old pine of the hours.

Summer is trapped under the thin
glass on the brook, making
the sound of an emptying bottle.

Before the long silence,
the monks make a long soft rustling,
adjusting their robes.

The deer are safe now. Their tracks
are made of snow. The wind has dragged
its branches over their history.

Chase Twichell

“Pine” by Chase Twichell from The Snow Watcher published by Ontario Review Press. © 1998 by Chase Twichell.

THIS LITTLE GLADE, REMEMBER

When lying beneath a ponderosa
pine, looking up through layers
of branches, mazes of leaf-spikes

and cones—contemplation grows
receptive to complexity,
the pleasant temptation of pine-
scented tangle. Sky as proposition
is willingly divided and spliced
into a thesis of weaves and hallows.

Name them something else
if you wish, but needled shadow
and substance are, in this hour,
an architecture of philosophy.

And a rising wind, called ”a rough
and bawdy wind“ by a rough and bawdy
voice, is that wind and that voice
transformed. The structure of words
sways and bends in the blow.

Looking away into the clear sky, expectation shifts. Vision becomes/ a welcome to guests
of crows in new/ dimensions who themselves become/ not only depth and horizon
in a circus/ of wings but old vision’s startling visitors.

Not soul alone, but soul consumed
by a single bee descending into the center
of a purple mountain lily is soul
to a soul suckled in sleep.

Earth and human together
form a unique being. A brief era
of immortality is lent to each
by the other. Move momentarily
now—with hovering granite cliff,
with sun-stripe flick of perhaps
vagrant shrew, with raised tack
of mightly larkspur—into this company.

Pattiann Rogers

“This Little Glade, Remember” from Generations.
Copyright © 2004 by Pattiann Rogers.

clay

sometimes i'm just overwhelmed by the beauty of this stuff. does it appear that way to you too?

after a day of research, i'd say the most i've learned is that the clay in your location is very very important, and that many nooks, crannies & villages have distinctive styles of the porcelain/pottery that come from their town.


but i am so grateful that more every day is available online, that others seem to find this important as well, and that one can come across articles like this one. it's not precisely on topic with these particular illustrations, but it's not exactly not, either. it reveals more of the complexity of the incoming japonisme, and some of the importance of ceramics as cultural artifact.

and besides, it's by gabriel weisberg.

JAPANESE ART ON A PLATE

At the Paris World’s Fair of 1867 there was immense interest in a ceramic service decorated by Félix Bracquemond for Eugène Rousseau. It was considered to be revolutionary in the evolution of dinner-service decoration, as it was not only the first in France in which Japanese motifs were used, it was also the first to break from traditional schemes of plate decoration.

It at once became the touchstone by which other decorators using Japanese motifs were judged, and remained successful for decades. Other versions were produced after Rousseau (1827-1891), its primary promoter, sold his business in 1885 to Ernest Leveillé. He in turn sold it to Harant et Guignard, known as ‘Maison Toy’, in 1902. Louis Harant of Maison Toy continued to edit the service until 1938.

The Bracquemond- Rousseau service demonstrates that there was a commercial market for ceramic decoration in this style. However, while it may have been the first of its kind, and eminently successful, it was not the only early table service influenced by Japanese art.

In 1873-74 another service was shown at the exhibition of the Union Centrale des Arts Décoratifs in Paris.

Commis- sioned by the jeweller Frédéric Boucheron, designed and painted by Henri Lambert, and produced for Eugène Rousseau at Creil- Montereau, it is possibly as large as the Bracquemond-Rousseau service. Although comparable in quality to the earlier service, it appears to exist only as one set in a private collection in Paris, together with a few pieces in the Musée National Adrien Dubouché, Limoges, and there is no evidence that it was commercially manufactured.

As a result, it has remained almost entirely unknown, and is published here for the first time. Its story makes clear how ceramic decoration became the way in which Japonisme was introduced to a public that had the financial means to purchase such table services for their homes. (read the rest of the article here)