Japanese, likely Edo Period (1603-1868). A hobin or houhin form pottery teapot for brewing gyokuro or sencha tea, with metallic gray glaze over a copper colored ground. The lidded teapot with holed strainer to interior of spout and simple round knob on lid. Marked to underside with impressed calligraphic mark within a square cartouche. Provenance: From the Estate of Mr. Soichi Furuta, Woodstock, Georgia. Note: Soichi Furuta (1927-2011) was a Renaissance Man of sorts, beginning his career in fine art arena. After attending UCLA, he joined a creative design and packaging firm in New York where he later became president. The firm (Stuart, Gunn & Furuta) was responsible for packaging design for a number of major brands including Michelob, Hershey's, Vicks, and Nestle. Concurrently, Mr. Furuta taught graduate-level courses in design at the City University in New York, later, he served as an adjunct professor of literature at St. Andrews Presbyterian College in North Carolina. Later in life, Furuta penned a dozen books in both English and Japanese with subjects ranging from poetry to translations and even a memoir. He was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize in 1989 for his book of poetry, "Montefeltro the Hawk Nose" that references the artwork of the Italian painter Piero della Francesca. Soichi Furuta's fine tuned sense of poetry, aesthetics and simple beauty are apparent throughout his collection as well as reflected in his own work.

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