Large white tripod dish by Yoshikawa Masamichi 吉川正道

Japan, Heisei period, circa 2000

Large circular white porcelain dish resting on three cylindrical feet. The widely flared basin opens into a thin, almost horizontal rim, while the lower part concentrates the work's plastic tension. The body is animated by irregular swellings and slight deformations that break with the perfect geometry of the upper plate. Under a thick and luminous white glaze, the surface retains imperfections, hollows and some dark breakthroughs that give the form an almost organic presence. The whiteness is neither cold nor smooth in the academic sense: it covers a living, sculpted volume, where the regularity of the circle dialogues with a seemingly unstable but perfectly controlled base.

This piece is fully characteristic of the work of Yoshikawa Masamichi, born in 1946 in Chigasaki, and based and active in Tokoname. Initially trained in design, he founded his own workshop in 1975 and developed a very personal language around porcelain, seihakuji, and thick sculptural forms, sometimes architectural, sometimes freer. The Metropolitan Museum, Museum of Arts and Design, and Dai Ichi Arts all emphasize this very singular way of diverting the expected purity of porcelain towards heavier, more constructed, more expressive volumes.

Here, Yoshikawa seeks neither the simple functional dish nor the purely sculptural object. He holds both together. The wide rim and reduced depth maintain the idea of use, but the deformations of the wall and the treatment of the three feet shift the work towards a presence of a table installation, almost a landscape. This tension between function and sculpture corresponds well to his more general practice, known both for his monumental porcelain works and for his blue and white or monochrome white functional pieces. His works are now held in several important institutions, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Arts and Design in New York, the Victoria and Albert Museum, and the Musée national de Céramique de Sèvres, according to consulted gallery and museum biographies.

The tomobako bears the inscription 高台皿, which can be understood as a dish on a tall pedestal or a dish on an elevated base, which suits this form very well. The piece is accompanied by its signed cloth and a printed biographical note about the artist. The photographed document notably recalls his birth in 1946, his establishment in Tokoname, his participation in numerous exhibitions in Japan and abroad, as well as several important awards, among which the gold medal at the International Ceramics Festival of Vallauris in 2002 and the Grand Prix of the International Ceramic Biennial of Taiwan in 2004, distinctions also mentioned in gallery biographies.

This work clearly demonstrates the strength of Yoshikawa Masamichi: a white porcelain whose apparent clarity excludes neither thickness, nor weight, nor irregularity. The dish retains the restraint of a simple form, but its tripod construction, its controlled deformations and its dense glaze give it a plastic authority far superior to that of a mere table object.

Dimensions: height 14.5 cm; width 31.5 cm; depth 30.5 cm.