Curious purple crazing in Hagi bowls question

[Saladin]

Greetings,

This seems like a pretty cool place full of well informed, interesting people. I have a question to test the Hagi masters here. I have three Ido style Hagi tea bowls which all seem to have a curious purple stain to the crazing. Since these are new and unused pieced it is not the effect of tea and must either be some sort of mysterious firing trick or some sort of stain. A friend of mine back in Boston who studied in Japan once told me that Japanese potters sometimes stained their pots by rubbing powdered manganese in the cracks (barf). I sincerely hope this is not the case as I like drinking tea out one of these lovely bowls. I don't think this is the blushing that results from firing Japanese clay in neutral atmospheres, but of course I could be wrong hence my question here. Thanks!

Best regards,

Salah ad Din.

[Drax]

Hmmmmm, any chance that it looks similar to the crazing in this photo here?

That's a celadon pot, but the 'veins' (hard to see) are a dark red-violet.

I don't recall having seen it on Hagi, and only on celadon pieces, so it's probably not it. But that sort of thing is the first thing that popped into mind.

[woozl]

Love to see some pics.
Can you link, or perhaps attach photo?

[Saladin]

I'll take a photo. I actually have a blue celadon Japanese bowl that has stained purple cracks like that too. Forgot about that one..I wonder what that's stained with?!

These bowls are for sure Hagi.

[Saladin]

Well, the color just doesn't come through on a jpg. I'm sorry if I alarmed anyone with a manganese question! I'm sure I'm just being neurotic.

[Chip]

Could just be the color of the unglazed clay beneath the glaze. It might have the appearance of purple which might be just that, appearance ... or the clay color coming through glaze.

[Saladin]

Yeah...I suppose these pots could be fooling me, but from what I know about pottery (20 years of potting and obsessively studying Japanese pottery and glazes) I'm not convinced that they weren't stained with something. The foot on the Yamane bowl clearly has some sort of stain over the clay body, maybe Fe203? Doesn't have to be toxic of course! FWIW the bowls were made by Seigan Yamane and Kyodo Hirano.

[bearsbearsbears]

I'm not convinced that they weren't stained with something. The foot on the Yamane bowl clearly has some sort of stain over the clay body, maybe Fe203?

Hagi potters slip their wares with a high iron slip to promote glaze crawl. As far as I know, it's harmless.

EDIT:

A bit of impromptu poetry, an ode to Jimi Hagindrix:

Purple craze, all in my pot
Don't know, if it's safe or not
Craze is colored, don't know why
'Scuse me, while I test this guy.

[Saladin]

Well, curiosity got the best of me so I decided to do some more scrutinizing yesterday. I thought the exposed clay looked color-enhanced so I decided to see if if was a fired-on stain, slip, or just a rubbed on stain of some sort. I got the foot wet and scrubbed the area a bit and the rag quickly turned a rusty red. To me it looks like the bowl was washed with iron oxide ( a common material all potters have in the studio). This doesn't happen to a clay body or a slip after it has been fired. It isn't a big deal and perhaps they have been doing this for centuries as a way to make the glaze look more interesting. Thanks for all the feedback.