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Rizu Takahashi Examples of work included in the June 2007 Harlequin Gallery exhibition that are available from 3rd June.
No.78 Black wood-fired flower vase (Kaki). Height: 21.3cm (8.4") Price: SOLD	No.81 Large shino facetted yunomi. Height: 10.8cm (4.25") Diameter: 8.5cm (3.3”) Price: SOLD
No.88 Iga-style chawan with signed wooden box. Height: 8.3cm (3.25") Diameter: 11.2cm (4.4”) Price: £750	No.68. Guinomi. Height: 6.6cm (2.6”) Diameter: 6.4cm (2.5”) Price: £80
No.79 Tall oblong flower vase (Kaki). Height: 41.9cm (16.5”) Price: £180
Rizu Takahashi is the local potter of the trio in this exhibition, as he lives in the South of France. He produces work based on that of the Bizen tradition, having previously had a kiln near to Bizen itself. I think that it is fair to say that his work is more austere, more contemplative than the other potters here and is as he states, “impregnated with a Zen philosophy”. Rizu was born in 1941 in Fukuyama City, Hiroshima prefecture and was originally taught to pot around 1960 by Jyvemon Kato, who produced Mino ware and was honoured for this by the Gifu prefecture. Rizu began working as a professional potter in 1983 and has fired with wood throughout his career. From 1988 until he moved to France with his French wife in 2004 he had an anagama kiln in the Mizunami mountains of Gifu, where he gained a reputation as “a fire magician and a master of tea”. Rizu built a new anagama in the garden of his French home at the beginning of this year and I understand that most, if not all, of the pots on show at the Harlequin will be from its first firing (Hatsugama in Japanese). Although he does use some local clays from France and Spain, his work remains “completely removed from time, seeming both like finds from an archaeological excavation and from a civilisation in the far future”.
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