Echizen Bunzan

The nursery and the pots, the same year

In 1973 he opened Sabae Engei, a horticultural nursery in Fukui. He began making pots the same year — not later, once the nursery was established, but at the same time. Growing and making start together, and there is no earlier work.

一九七三年、鯖江園芸を開園。同年、作陶を始める。

Working inside a tradition, not around it

The wording on his relationship to it is precise: he worked in accordance with the Echizen ware handed down locally, and established his own manner within it.

What comes out of that is in three strands: hand-built yakishime, unglazed; glazed work, with 辰砂 shinsha among the glazes named; and pieces finished with inlay.

Red plum, on a white ground

Red plum — blossom and branch — drawn over a white ground, on a small lobed pot.

Plum appears again on the one piece of his that drew a remark in print — the section below.

Whether the plum is a bow to Kenzan

Three pots are currently confirmed. One is a six-sided enamelled piece, the trunk of an old plum laid down boldly in 銹絵 sabi-e, and plum blossom in many colours.

The remark wonders whether it is a quiet homage to Ogata Kenzan.

Perhaps a quiet homage to Kenzan.

Kenzan (1663–1743) worked in Kyoto, the younger brother of the painter Ogata Kōrin, and made much use of sabi-e — the same iron-brown painting named in that sentence. Iron-brown plum, and colour: the vocabulary lines up.

But it is put as a question, and it stays one here.

A brushed signature not among the documented forms

A square framed kiln mark in cobalt, with 文山 brushed below it.

The painted 文山 is not among the impressions documented here. Two impressions are documented for him, both reading 越前文山, and which characters each one carries cannot be settled from the impressions documented here. A painted mark is not among them.

It is set down here because the pot is in front of us. A mark you cannot place is worth more to you described than left out.

What the kiln name does not tell you

This is the most practical thing on the page. 越前文山窯 is a kiln name, not his own mark, and work by another hand has come out of it under that name — his wife, てるみ, among them. One such pot is currently known: a small piece in a clouded white glaze with amber, ochre and deep blue running into it, the rim waved and the foot low.

A pot like that should be described as 越前文山窯・てるみ作, not as Bunzan's own work.

This is not documented here; it is held as a caution, because it decides attribution. And the documented description of his work — hand-built yakishime, shinsha, inlay — would not lead you to expect that glaze at all.