Morino Taimei (1934-)Glazed stoneware vase Showa era (1926-1989), Circa 1980Slab-built stoneware vase, perforated in linear arrangements, painted on the surface and incised with concentric circles around each perforation 13 1/2 x 9 3/4 x 5in (34.2 x 24.8 x 12.7cm)注脚Provenance:Purchased from Japonesque, Inc., San FranciscoMorino Taimei (also called Hiroaki) is one of the few surviving members of the post-war Kyoto ceramic avant-garde. After training in Kyoto with two traditionalist porcelain decorators, Tomimoto Kenkichi and Fujimoto Yoshimichi, in the 1960s he worked as a ceramic instructor at the University of Chicago, broadening his exposure to the latest international trends. Much of his work takes as its starting point the tradition of ceramic sculpture established in the 1950s by Yagi Kazuo and his Kyoto contemporaries. He employs slab- and hand-building techniques to construct vases and screens that combine an assured and distinctive contemporary abstract language with seasonal references and other motifs recalling traditional Kyoto crafts. Morino's works are typically decorated with several layers of glaze, one of them with a high glass content that he sometimes uses to create a distinctive surface texture.