E-Shino Chawan | Bird Motif Iron Underglaze | Kuchikiri Rim Notch | Mino Tradition

In the vocabulary of Shino ceramics (志野焼, from the Mino kilns of present-day Gifu Prefecture), the kuchikiri (口切り — mouth cut) is one of the most deliberately wabi gestures a potter can make. With a tool, wire, or blade, the potter cuts a V-shaped notch into the freshly thrown rim before the clay hardens. The circle is broken. The bowl now has an orientation — a "face" (omote, 表) defined by the notch's position. In the tea ceremony, the host reads this orientation when presenting the bowl: the notch indicates where the front lies, and the tea is offered with the bowl's most beautiful face turned toward the guest. The kuchikiri transforms a chawan from a closed, self-referential form into an object with directionality — a gesture toward the guest encoded in the clay before the first fire was lit.

This chawan (茶碗) carries that gesture in its rim, where the kuchikiri notch is clearly cut and preserved under the thick white Shino feldspar glaze, which has pooled and bubbled around the cut in its characteristic way. The exterior decoration, painted in iron oxide (onita, 鬼板) on the raw clay body before glazing, presents a bird in mid-flight — a spare, abbreviated brushwork figure with wings outspread, rendered in the fast, uncontrived way that Mino studio potters have employed since the Momoyama period. Under the white feldspar glaze, the bird is visible but softened — present without announcement, in the spirit of ma (間, the Japanese concept of meaningful negative space and restraint). Whether the bird is a sparrow (suzume, 雀), a swallow (tsubame, 燕), or a more abstracted avian form, its identity matters less than its gesture: a living thing in motion, caught under winter-white glaze.

The glaze is classic Shiro-Shino (白志野 — white Shino) with heavy iron spotting and characteristic crazing developing across the surface. The base and lower body show warm orange hi-iro (火色) fire marks — the kiln's direct flame record on the unglazed clay and the thinly glazed lower zones. The base is wide and flat, in the Mino tradition, showing the coarse sandy clay with its own fire coloration. No kiln mark or signature is present.

For the tea ceremony practitioner, this is a fully equipped wabi chawan: a Shino glaze tradition, an E-Shino painted motif, a kuchikiri rim orientation mark, and hi-iro fire marks — every element present and in conversation. For the collector, the kuchikiri notch makes this the most ceremony-specific piece among the three Shino bowls in this collection.

Excellent condition. Glaze intact. Kuchikiri notch as fired. Hi-iro and iron spotting authentic. No chips or repairs. Showa studio, c. 1960–1990.