Our Man Utz (commedia dell'arte)

 
  

Our man Utz. It all started when he was a boy. Like most great love affairs, it had been love at first sight. Little Kaspar usually spent his summers at his grandmother's castle in the Czech countryside. It was a castle full of all kinds of random, dusty bric-a-brac and among the suits of armor and antique porcelain, little Kaspar Utz

found himself bewitched by a figurine of Harlequin that had been modeled by the greatest of Meissen modelers JJ Kaendler.

 

So, we know the exact time and place--the moment of possession, if you will.

And he begged his grandmother for the piece and receiving his heart's desire, little Kaspar,

pivoted the figurine in the flickering candlelight and ran his pudgy fingers, lovingly over the glaze and brilliant enamels.

He had found his vocation: he wanted to devote his life to collecting--'rescuing' as he came to call it--the porcelains of the Meissen factory.

So, we have the Fall (the passion and possession); then we have the commitment (and with all great commitments, it is "to the death") Utz then sets about acquiring the knowledge that will come in handy on his Quest-- a Quest, I am sure you will agree, no less great than that of the Holy Grail.

And so, our man next seeks knowledge as he begins to make his early purchases.

By the end, he had some 2000 pieces cram packed into a tiny Prague apartment. Space became the big issue but that wasn't the only problem either. There was a larger enemy--  The Government. This great beast tried greedily to take away Utz's collection, and-- indeed--  it took all his powers to hold them off. The dragon was hungry and devoured everything in its path-- to the extent of planting a listening device in his apartment. Those who could leave, did so. The dragon, never satisfied, took everything, leaving nothing but a "one-color world" behind in its wake. Utz, too, decided to leave but in leaving his collection behind, he knew he was taking a great chance of losing it to the Government forever.

Every year when life in the Czech capital became too much for him, he did leave. But a few months was all it took. The lure of his true love was too great. And back he walked into the lion's den. In France, he remained bored.

Maybe a different country?

Germany? Italy? France? Three possibilities/ None of them inviting. Germany? Never. The break had been final. England? Not after the Dresden raid. The United States? Impossible. The noise would depress him dreadfully. Prague, after all, was a city where you heard the snowflakes falling. Australia? He had never been attracted by the colonies. Argentina? He was too old to tango.

And his coup de gras: a complete Commedia dell arte series of figurines.

Of course, like all the world's greatest lovers, Utz has a philosophy. He tells us that "Leibniz-who believed this world was the best of all possible worlds-insisted that porcelain was its best material." After a lifetime of Jung, and Goethe, Christian alchemy and Chinese alchemy, Utz was convinced that porcelain functioned as a golem; born from the fires of hell (the heat of the kiln) it was none other than the philosopher's stone: white gold.

In the West, of course, the hallmark of porcelain is its translucency. In the East, like ancient jade, it is its ringing sound when struck. (You might remember how when buying porcelain at Mitsukoshi or Takashimaya, the sales lady will flick the rim of each and every piece to make sure it rings.)

**

This was my second time with Herr Utz. I had read UTZ years ago in Ubud. Re-reading it again after all these years-- something struck me, and that is, I have none of Utz in me. The passion of the collector is just not part of my personality as truly neither the thrill of the hunt nor possessing more than two of something appeals to me. And, yet it is not that I don't pine for things like Utz.

I suppose you could say I fall in love very differently from men like our man Utz. Not only that, but the entire time I was "with Utz" my heart was actually faraway-- spending time with one man, I was imagining myself faraway with another. All the way in Borneo, in fact.

I have long pined to own an Heirloom Jar from Borneo. The great jars of Southeast Asia are famous enough-- the peoples of Vietnam and Thailand to Borneo and the Philippines have long stored water and rice in large jars of Southern Chinese origin. A Japanese anthropologist once explained to me how the invention of the pot prolonged human life by at least a decade. Utsuwa, in Japanese, jars and vessels store our food and water-- they are therefore utterly intertwined with our lives. In parts of SE Asia, many are considered Sacred in fact.

In Borneo, for example, they are treated as Oracles that can tell the future, and are also known to be able to turn into deer and run away. Like the medicine jars held in the hands of Buddhas, these jars too stood at that same place of crossroads-between the sacred, the medicinal and the everyday.

Very high quality earthenware pots, they are used to bury the dead. Of all the ways to go, wouldn't you like to be stuffed, fetal position into a great jar and then put back into the side of a mountain or into the ground?

Just imagining owning one gives me the greatest thrill. I would like one in an earthy brown. My first choice would be to have a raised flower design of the same color around the rim, but even there, I am not picky. What I desire is a jar so simple that my imagination can fill in the blanks-- just like in an ink painting, where the white space is in fact the most pregnant part of the picture. 

The jars also became part of the brisk ceramics trade that existed within Asia from the 15th-18th century. Many of the finest pieces of this trade-- as is well known-- remain preserved today in Japan, where they have been prized by Japan's great aesthete tea practioners. Famous among the utilitarian ceramics prized in Japan are the famed teabowls from Korea, which have long been valued as objects of tremendous prestige. The teabowls are known as Korai (meaning Korea) chawan (teabowl). Shown left is the famed Kizaemon Teabowl, which is a designated National Treasure of Japan. Of the 26 registered meibutsu (famous) teabowls, the Kizaemon is considered to be the finest of all-- indeed, it is thought to display all the greatest qualities of a work of fine art: dignity, beauty, composure and pedigree.

In all probability, when it was "discovered," it was probably just an old rice bowl in a peasant's house. But Hideyoshi's soldiers had been given strict instructions: bring home anything of beauty you find in your ploundering. And so this teabowl made its way back to Japan-- changing hands for greater and greater sums of money until it became priceless- a treasure of the nation. 

Utz's alchemy.

And like with all alchemy, possession occurs via the colloboration between physical form and human imagination; for as the staff at Sothebys knows, without the narrative, the pots are nothing but lumps of clay.

Utz part two here

 

 
  

Our man Utz. It all started when he was a boy. Like most great love affairs, it had been love at first sight. Little Kaspar usually spent his summers at his grandmother's castle in the Czech countryside. It was a castle full of all kinds of random, dusty bric-a-brac and among the suits of armor and antique porcelain, little Kaspar Utz

 

So, we know the exact time and place--the moment of possession, if you will.

And he begged his grandmother for the piece and receiving his heart's desire, little Kaspar,

He had found his vocation: he wanted to devote his life to collecting--'rescuing' as he came to call it--the porcelains of the Meissen factory.

So, we have the Fall (the passion and possession); then we have the commitment (and with all great commitments, it is "to the death") Utz then sets about acquiring the knowledge that will come in handy on his Quest-- a Quest, I am sure you will agree, no less great than that of the Holy Grail.

And so, our man next seeks knowledge as he begins to make his early purchases.

By the end, he had some 2000 pieces cram packed into a tiny Prague apartment. Space became the big issue but that wasn't the only problem either. There was a larger enemy--  The Government. This great beast tried greedily to take away Utz's collection, and-- indeed--  it took all his powers to hold them off. The dragon was hungry and devoured everything in its path-- to the extent of planting a listening device in his apartment. Those who could leave, did so. The dragon, never satisfied, took everything, leaving nothing but a "one-color world" behind in its wake. Utz, too, decided to leave but in leaving his collection behind, he knew he was taking a great chance of losing it to the Government forever.

Every year when life in the Czech capital became too much for him, he did leave. But a few months was all it took. The lure of his true love was too great. And back he walked into the lion's den. In France, he remained bored.

Maybe a different country?

Germany? Italy? France? Three possibilities/ None of them inviting. Germany? Never. The break had been final. England? Not after the Dresden raid. The United States? Impossible. The noise would depress him dreadfully. Prague, after all, was a city where you heard the snowflakes falling. Australia? He had never been attracted by the colonies. Argentina? He was too old to tango.

And his coup de gras: a complete Commedia dell arte series of figurines.

Of course, like all the world's greatest lovers, Utz has a philosophy. He tells us that "Leibniz-who believed this world was the best of all possible worlds-insisted that porcelain was its best material." After a lifetime of Jung, and Goethe, Christian alchemy and Chinese alchemy, Utz was convinced that porcelain functioned as a golem; born from the fires of hell (the heat of the kiln) it was none other than the philosopher's stone: white gold.

In the West, of course, the hallmark of porcelain is its translucency. In the East, like ancient jade, it is its ringing sound when struck. (You might remember how when buying porcelain at Mitsukoshi or Takashimaya, the sales lady will flick the rim of each and every piece to make sure it rings.)

**

This was my second time with Herr Utz. I had read UTZ years ago in Ubud. Re-reading it again after all these years-- something struck me, and that is, I have none of Utz in me. The passion of the collector is just not part of my personality as truly neither the thrill of the hunt nor possessing more than two of something appeals to me. And, yet it is not that I don't pine for things like Utz.

I suppose you could say I fall in love very differently from men like our man Utz. Not only that, but the entire time I was "with Utz" my heart was actually faraway-- spending time with one man, I was imagining myself faraway with another. All the way in Borneo, in fact.

I have long pined to own an Heirloom Jar from Borneo. The great jars of Southeast Asia are famous enough-- the peoples of Vietnam and Thailand to Borneo and the Philippines have long stored water and rice in large jars of Southern Chinese origin. A Japanese anthropologist once explained to me how the invention of the pot prolonged human life by at least a decade. Utsuwa, in Japanese, jars and vessels store our food and water-- they are therefore utterly intertwined with our lives. In parts of SE Asia, many are considered Sacred in fact.

In Borneo, for example, they are treated as Oracles that can tell the future, and are also known to be able to turn into deer and run away. Like the medicine jars held in the hands of Buddhas, these jars too stood at that same place of crossroads-between the sacred, the medicinal and the everyday.

Very high quality earthenware pots, they are used to bury the dead. Of all the ways to go, wouldn't you like to be stuffed, fetal position into a great jar and then put back into the side of a mountain or into the ground?

Just imagining owning one gives me the greatest thrill. I would like one in an earthy brown. My first choice would be to have a raised flower design of the same color around the rim, but even there, I am not picky. What I desire is a jar so simple that my imagination can fill in the blanks-- just like in an ink painting, where the white space is in fact the most pregnant part of the picture. 

The jars also became part of the brisk ceramics trade that existed within Asia from the 15th-18th century. Many of the finest pieces of this trade-- as is well known-- remain preserved today in Japan, where they have been prized by Japan's great aesthete tea practioners. Famous among the utilitarian ceramics prized in Japan are the famed teabowls from Korea, which have long been valued as objects of tremendous prestige. The teabowls are known as Korai (meaning Korea) chawan (teabowl). Shown left is the famed Kizaemon Teabowl, which is a designated National Treasure of Japan. Of the 26 registered meibutsu (famous) teabowls, the Kizaemon is considered to be the finest of all-- indeed, it is thought to display all the greatest qualities of a work of fine art: dignity, beauty, composure and pedigree.

In all probability, when it was "discovered," it was probably just an old rice bowl in a peasant's house. But Hideyoshi's soldiers had been given strict instructions: bring home anything of beauty you find in your ploundering. And so this teabowl made its way back to Japan-- changing hands for greater and greater sums of money until it became priceless- a treasure of the nation. 

Utz's alchemy.

And like with all alchemy, possession occurs via the colloboration between physical form and human imagination; for as the staff at Sothebys knows, without the narrative, the pots are nothing but lumps of clay.

Utz part two here