For the potter Clair Catillaz, 38, of the Catskill, N.Y.-based Clam Lab, moon jars represent the iconic form of an admirable ceramics tradition. In 2016, she visited London’s British Museum, home to the West’s most storied moon jar, made in 18th-century Korea by an unknown artisan, acquired by the British potter Bernard Leach in 1935 on a visit to that country during its occupation by Japan and gifted to his friend and fellow potter Lucie Rie in 1943. “It was imposing, and big,” Catillaz says of the piece. “Seeing it in real life, it’s like seeing a celebrity, almost.”
Earlier that summer, Catillaz had taken a workshop at Alfred University’s College of Ceramics with the master potter Kwangho Lee, who shared a range of traditional Korean techniques, including those for making wheel-spun moon jars, as well as slab-and-coil-constructed onggi, large-scale vessels used for fermentation. Watching him work, she learned about building vessels in “what I have come to understand is the Korean style,” she says, “this very loose, very confident touch that’s not so precious but very direct.” In her own practice, rounded clay bodies find slightly erotic biomorphic contours, with arms curled like horns or fiddlehead ferns, and geometric incised openings carved from smoothed exteriors. Catillaz adds squared pedestals and an array of subtly colored glazes that almost appear airbrushed to her moon jars, giving some of them a warm patinated effect and others a faintly sparkly, celestial shimmer.
For the self-taught potter Ilona Golovina, 35, a native of Stavropol, Russia, now based in Brooklyn, part of the moon jar’s appeal lies in its ability to communicate the terroir and culture of its maker. She often uses foraged clay, as well as refuse materials from quarries, mines and artists’ studios. She incorporates these into experimental slip glazes for her moon jars, some of which are crafted with elongated cylindrical bases and necks. “My works are more like a moon and less of a moon jar,” she says, “but it’s still a reference, and I make them with a respect for the culture and the tradition.”
