Claire Landais-Sauvage named this beautiful satiny black tea bowl “Sunlight, even at night,” which she took from the 1989 Italian movie “Il sole anche di notte”. She formed the bowl with wild clays gathered in the Lot region in the southwest of France where Landais-Sauvage has a studio. Like all of her bowls, she hand-formed this chawan with a single piece of clay - without adding or removing any - slowly growing its shape with tiny pressures between her fingers.

Landais-Sauvage made the glaze with three different volcanic sands. She used sands from Bali and Cape Verde for the first glaze, then wood-firing it in her Crane kiln. After coating the bowl again with glaze made with sand from Stromboli, off the coast of Sicily, it was fired once more in her charcoal kiln Heart of Embers.

Rich in golden tones, Landais-Sauvage’s tea bowl sparkles even in low light. When photographing this bowl, the focus sensor in my camera glittered wildly, unable to resolve the bowl’s lively surface. The glaze glows a warm black. And while this chawan’s title suggests the black’s warm tones, it also reminds me of a summer road spilling the sun’s warmth long after dark. 

New from the artist’s studio. Comes with Landais-Sauvage’s written account of the tea bowl’s making.