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Large Moon Jar 1: C.11-2018

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Object information

Current Location: In storage

Titles

Large Moon Jar 1

Maker(s)

Potter: Hirai, Akiko

Entities

Categories

Description

Thrown and coiled red stoneware, porcelain slip, paper fibre, wood ash and glaze.

Near-spherical moon jar part thrown and partly coiled from red stoneware which has blackened where exposed to the firing. Narrow fragmented rim, torn away so that half hangs down into the interior, and shoulder dented and ripped to one side. Irregular pieces of clay applied around the shoulder add to the crepuscular surface built up from layers of dripped slips and thick crackled blue-white and slime-green glazes, together suggesting a volcanic eruption which has left both icy cold and carbonised heat remains – perhaps the surface of the moon itself. The interior more smoothly glazed.

Notes

History note: Bought from Contemporary Applied Arts, Southwark Street, London SE1.

Legal notes

Given by Nicholas and Judith Goodison through the Art Fund

Measurements and weight

Diameter: 55 cm
Height: 49 cm

Place(s) associated

  • Stoke Newington ⪼ London ⪼ England

Acquisition and important dates

(2018-09-25) by Goodison, Nicholas and Judith

Dating

21st Century
Production date: AD 2018

Note

Akiko Hirai (b.1970) was born in Shizuoka, Japan and attended Aichi Gakuin University before moving to the UK in 1999. She studied ceramics at the University of Westminster and Central St Martins and has taught at Kensington & Chelsea College. She opened her own studio in the Chocolate Factory, Stoke Newington, in 2003. Her attraction to the moon jar form stems from the Korean jar owned by Bernard Leach and Lucie Rie, finding a reflection of the irregularities of landscape in its seeming imperfections and inspired by the way it wore its past. Hirai throws the bottom half of her moon jars and coils the upper part, pushing the clay to its limit ‘to reach the moment before collapse’, in each jar seeing the form anew, ‘something ambiguous, unsettled and imaginative’.

Materials used in production

Glaze
Stoneware

Techniques used in production

Throwing
Glazing
Coiling

References and bibliographic entries

Identification numbers

Accession number: C.11-2018
Primary reference Number: 225683
Entry form: 1362
Stable URI

Audit data

Created: Tuesday 20 November 2018 Updated: Friday 2 June 2023 Last processed: Wednesday 13 December 2023

Associated departments & institutions

Owner or interested party: The Fitzwilliam Museum
Associated department: Applied Arts

Citation for print

This record can be cited in the Harvard Bibliographic style using the text below:

The Fitzwilliam Museum (2024) "Large Moon Jar 1" Web page available at: https://data.fitzmuseum.cam.ac.uk/id/object/225683 Accessed: 2024-11-05 23:15:05

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{{cite web|url=https://data.fitzmuseum.cam.ac.uk/id/object/225683 |title=Large Moon Jar 1 |author=The Fitzwilliam Museum|accessdate=2024-11-05 23:15:05|publisher=The University of Cambridge}}

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