Studio Pottery Sphere Vase Ash Glaze, Iron Speckle, Leach/Hamada Tradition, Signed

A small, quietly composed spherical vase from the workshop of a studio potter who consciously works in the Anglo-Japanese tradition of Bernard Leach and Shoji Hamada. Hand-thrown on the wheel, the body shows the fine horizontal ridges of finger marks; irregularly placed iron speckles and deeper chestnut-brown zones are distributed over the green ash glaze, where the iron oxide has condensed into striking crystals during reduction firing. The green ash glaze is one of the classic Leach base tones from St Ives, the characteristic iron speckles are the tool signature of the Mashiko school around Hamada – a formal language that has shaped the international studio pottery vocabulary since the 1930s.

The format is deliberately small and intimate: H 10 × Ø 10 cm, with a narrow mouth, so that a single bloom or a dried stem completes the silhouette. The lower zone is left as an unglazed stoneware ring and shows the warm, sand-colored shard – a conscious commitment to the material honesty of the Mingei movement. The base mark bears an incised potter's signature; the condition is very good, no chips, no cracks.