Our man Utz
It all started when he was a boy. Like most great love affairs, it happened at first glance. Little Kaspar spent his summers at his grandmother's castle in the Czech countryside. The castle was full of all kinds of random, dusty bric-a-brac and among the suits of armor and antique porcelain, little Kaspar Utz
"found himself bewitched by a figurine of Harlequin that had been modeled by the greatest of Meissen modelers JJ Kaendler."
So, we know the exact time and place-the moment of possession, if you will. He begged his grandmother for the piece and receiving his heart's desire, little Kaspar, "pivoted the figurine in the flickering candlelight and ran his pudgy fingers, lovingly over the glaze and brilliant enamels."
"He had found his vocation: he wanted to devote his life to collecting--'rescuing' as he came to call it--the porcelains of the Meissen factory."
So, we have the Fall (the passion and possession); then we have the commitment (and with all great commitments, it is "to the death") Utz then sets about acquiring the knowledge that will come in handy on his Quest-- a Quest, I am sure you will agree, no less great than that of the Holy Grail. But wait! you protest, there was only one grail-and there certainly were no bloody figurines involved!
Our man next seeks knowledge and at the same time begins to make his early purchases.
By the end, he had some 2000 pieces cram packed into a tiny Prague apartment. And, space wasn't the only problem either. There was a larger enemy-- The Government. This great beast tried greedily to take away Utz's collection, and-- indeed-- it took all his powers to hold them off. The dragon was hungry and devoured everything in its path-- to the extent of planting a listening device in his apartment.
Those who could leave, did so. The dragon, never satisfied, took everything, leaving nothing but a "one-color world" behind in its wake. Utz, too, decided to leave. Every year in fact. But a few months was all it took. The lure of his true love was too great. And back he walked into the lion's den. In France, he remained bored.
Maybe a different country?
"Germany? Italy? France? Three possibilities/ None of them inviting. Germany? Never. The break had been final. England? Not after the Dresden raid. The United States? Impossible. The noise would depress him dreadfully. Prague, after all, was a city where you heard the snowflakes falling. Australia? He had never been attracted by the colonies. Argentina? He was too old to tango."
(This is my favorite passage of the novella.)
And his coup de gras: a complete Commedia dell arte series of figurines.
Of course, like all the world's greatest lovers, Utz has a philosophy. He tells us that "Leibniz-who believed this world was the best of all possible worlds-insisted that porcelain was its best material." After a lifetime of Jung, and Goethe, Christian alchemy and Chinese alchemy, Utz was convinced that porcelain functioned as a golem; born from the fires of hell (the heat of the kiln) it was none other than the philosopher's stone: white gold.
In the West, of course, the hallmark of porcelain is its translucency. In the East, like ancient jade, it is its ringing sound when struck. (You might remember how when buying porcelain at Mitsukoshi or Takashimaya, the sales lady will flick the rim of each and every piece to make sure it rings.)
**
This was my second time with Herr Utz. I had read UTZ years ago in Ubud. Re-reading it again something struck me, and that is, I have none of Utz in me. The passion of the collector is just not part of my persoanlity as truly neither the thrill of the hunt nor possessing more than two of something appeals to me. I suppose you could say I fall in love very differently from men like our man Utz. Not only that, but the entire time I was "with Utz" my heart was actually faraway-- spending time with one man, I was imagining myself faraway with another. All the way in Borneo, in fact.
I have long pined to own a Heirloom Jar from Borneo. The great jars of Southeast Asia are famous enough-- the peoples of Vietnam and Thailand to Borneo and the Philippines have long stored water and rice in large jars of Southern Chinese origin. A Japanese anthropologist once explained to me how the invention of the pot prolonged human life by at least a decade. Utsuwa, in Japanese, jars and vessels store our food and water-- they are therefore utterly inetrtwined with our lives, and in SE Asia, many are considered Sacred.
In Borneo, for example, they are treated as Oracles that can tell the future, and are also known to be able to turn into a deer and run away. Like the medicine jars held in the hands of Buddhas, these jars too stood at that same place of crossroads-between the sacred, the medicinal and the everyday.
Very high quality earthenware pots, they are used to bury the dead. Of all the ways to go, wouldn't you like to be stuffed, fetal position into a great jar and then put back into the side of a mountain or into the ground?
Just imagining owning one gives me the greatest thrill. I would like one in an earthy brown. My first choice would be to have a raised dragon of the same color around the rim, but even there, I am not picky. What I desire is a jar so simple that my imagination can fill in the blanks-- just like in an ink painting, where the white space is in fact the most pregnant part of the picture. It must be big enough to squeeze a corpse into*, but with a neck thin enough to hold flowering branches in winter. I know just where I would put it too. Right next to my bed-- if I had a bed.
The heirloom jars were mostly the product of southern Chinese potters in exile-in Champa or Borneo or Luzon-- though an aquaintance Paul insists that no, native potters made some of the finest pieces as well.
Part of the brisk trade that existed within Asia, many ceramics from the 15th-18th century remain preserved in Japan-- where they have been prized by Japan's great aesthete tea practioners. And like the famed teabowls from Korea, these utilitarian items were valued as objects of tremendous prestige. The teabowls are known as Korai (meaning Korea) chawan (teabowl). Shown left is the famed Kizaemon Teabowl, which is a designated National Treasure of Japan. Of the 26 registered Meibutsu (famouss) teabowls, the Kizaemon is considered to be the finest of all-- indeed, it is thought to display all the greatest qualities of a work of fine art: dignity, beauty, composure and pedigree.
In all probability, when it was "discovered," it was probably just an old rice bowl in a peasant's house. But Hideyoshi's soldiers had been given strict instructions: bring home anything of beauty you find in your ploundering. And so this teabowl made its way back to Japan-- changing hands for greater and greater sums of money until it became priceless- a treasure of the nation. (The teabowl's nested boxes for storage are shown at left).
I don't know how long Tetsuya stood in front of the case during an exhibition of the nation's great teabowls at the Tokyo National Museum. It couldn't have been too long since most of Tokyo was standing right alongside us pressing us from the front and the rear. Standing in the long line, I silently wondered, is this really worth it? When we finally edged close to it, however, I knew: we were in the presence of a masterpiece! And we both were totally drawn in, possessed, if you will . First, what startled me was its size. It was sturdier than I would have expected, and for something so pleasingly off-balance, you just knew it rarely fell over. Sturdy and the color of loquats. Its imperfections only attracted us more. It is by far the most beautiful teabowl I have ever seen (and I have seen many). To me, it is the foot which is most beautiful. When I looked at it, I remember thinking how it was such a harmonious and exquisite marriage between the human hand and that of fire ( the chance firing of the kiln). Alchemy. I remember it fondly and long to see it again someday. To touch it is something I wouldnt even dream of. The truth is, the Kizaemon is the stuff of legend and has always been the property of the powerful. So, alas, back to my jar.
In addition to Korean and Chinese pottery, tea ceremony practioners have prized ceramics from SE Asia. Known as "Shimamono" (Island things). Shimamono were especially sought after as incense containers (kogo), tea jars (chatsubo) and tea containers (chaire). In particular, the tea jars and tea caddies from SE Asia were highly valued in Medieval Japan for both their rustic beauty as well as for their preservative qualities. That is to say that something about the unglazed stoneware seemed to help preserve the tea. Paul is interested in Luzon-ware, known in Japanese as rusun-yaki. Seeking to explain the stupendously high prices these pieces fetched throughout the entire region, Paul turns to geology and alchemy. I quote:
"Like most other descriptions of the jars, no mention of any glaze is offered. The earthenware jars were gilded and decorated with brocade making up somewhat for their unsightly appearance.
However, the lack of glaze would explain why contact with the interior of the jar was important in preserving tea leaves. A volcanic clay with minerals like montmorillonite could have possessed the required properties, but the Rusun clay was even more unique than ordinary volcanic types.
Pinatubo volcanic deposits are very high in sulfur, an element with strong preservative properties. Sulfur is also one of the two base elements used by both Eastern and Western alchemists to divide all things into categories similar to Yin and Yang of Chinese cosmology.
Indian alchemy described the kundalini, the volcanic snake-like energy residing near the base of the spine as surrounded by a mass of sulfur. The other element in this categorization is mercury. Sulfur and mercury are closely associated with volcanoes, fumaroles and hot springs.
Mercury mixed with other metals and then treated with sulfur produces the sulfides, among the most common types of preservatives used today. In ancient times, these sulfides were created by alchemists seeking to reproduce the Philosopher's Stone and similar products. The Pinatubo eruptive materials are known to be particularly sulfide-rich."
**
So, there you have it. Back to Utz's philosopher's stone. What our man Utz saw in all those colorful figurines-- thousands of them-- I suppose I am looking for as well-- in the inside of a great jar.
As Paul likes to emphasize, the Europeans could not understand the prices paid for such homely and plain jars. The answer is both in their simplicity (a glorious blank canvas) as well as in the clay itself, which was superb for storing tea leaves. Like those humble rice bowls from Korea, the finest examples were used by Shoguns and the nation's powerful.
For me, I want a jar I can live and die with. Now, that would a companion.
* For burial the jars were carefully cut in half vertically and then roped back together thereby sandwiching in the corpse.
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