In Teresa’s work, descriptively entitled “Ceramiques sobre blau ultramar” (Pots on ultramarine), the Virgin`s mantle, in that blue which Duccio Buoninsegna had typified as an attribute specific to Mary, has been spread over the table to welcome the conversazione of some oriental ceramic vessels, like those which are to be found in so many houses in the more traditional China or the most modern Japan, in so many stores in south east Asia where the sale of products in bulk makes large desirable porous containers necessary. The traces of that courtly world which once formed the background to the conversaziones of the heavenly aristocracy for the brush strokes of Simone Martini, Jan van Eyck, Il Bergognone, are reduced to the luxuriant lapis lazuli blue of the holy cloth and the golden spark which we can make out under the great green jar, a filament of shining brass like the traces of a crown which has ended up as something rather obsolete. The bowl’s moonlike pallor which speaks to us from one side of the canvas comes from the world of tea, of Japanese ceremony, and is of the Shino type, from the province of Mino, where agriculture and ceramics flourished in unison. It rests solidly on the surface, with its thick, uneven sides, with its imperfect, almost mother of pearl white, contrasting dramatically with the almost black background, and inserted into the group of ceramics stands forth like a secular Virgin Mary, full of spirit. Christine Shimizu talks of the “increment of being” which native Japanese ceramics bring to the recuperation of the great ancient ovens of the country with its folk-art production and above all the legendary invention of the Raku type bowls in Kyoto in the 16th century by the theist master Sen no Rikyu and the artisan Chojiro. In contrast to the earlier tea ceremonies, where the Chinese and Korean utensils presided on low daises with their historic prestige over beautifully decorated halls, now all the objects, the utensils, are placed directly on a humble woven straw tatami, and need a stronger and more autonomous, we could almost say telluric, physical presence, as if they emerged directly from the earth instead of descending by divine transcendental emanation from the jade-coloured sky. It is no longer a floating world of resplendent princes and saints, but rather something vigorously present, corruptible and material.
“...what is present is present with full fervour, as if it were down on its knees praying for you...”
Letters on Cezanne, Rainer Maria Rilke