NOTES ON THE ORIGINS OF GIANT MANTA AND HORN - 3

Written August 2006

"Spanish Dancers"

It's fascinating to compare Toku's most "modern" designs with his most "rococo" carvings.  I think I see a number of  underlying similarities between the shapes of the vertical pairs of pipes (387 + 485 and 392 + 484), including some shared lines within their bowls and their tails:

The "Spanish Dancers" were carved right after the development of the first Mantas and they show Toku's imagination folding his newest ideas back into their antecedents and creating yet another kind of "Manta horn" (or "Horn Manta").  The "Manta-within-the-Dancer" is most clearly visible in the footprints of 387 and 392 - the widened front, narrowed rear, and prominent central ridge, but there are other echoes as well, which I will discuss in more detail below.

The Manta "beneath" SPC 387 and 392

Giant Manta and "Spanish Dancer" SPC 392 (Hiro, 2005)

Notwithstanding the more modern, simplified shapes of the Giant in comparison to the more ornate, flexible lines of this "Spanish Dancer," I see some surprising similarities within their underlying forms - especially when viewed from certain angles. To my eye, these echoes reveal their family relationship ... their shared, Manta heritage.

Note how the end of the Giant's plateau bottom seems to imply the Spanish Dancer's "goatee" (though the beard has been shaved off).

The Giant's Manta-heritage is probably least obvious from the bottom, where the center ridge seems to have disappeared.  Yet, if we regard the sheet of plateau as an expanded and flattened ridge - and the thin side panels as the remnants of wide, smooth base - then we may see more clearly the underlying Manta shape (wide front, narrowing middle, widening rear).

Giant Horn and "Spanish Dancer" SPC 387 (3 snails, 2005)

At first sight, the Giant Horn and the "Spanish Dancer" (3 snails) may not seem to share any similarities.  Yet behind the ornamental surfaces of the "Dancer" and the formal modernisms of the Horn, I detect imaginative resonance between the two compositions.  That is to say, it seems to me that Toku was holding  some common design ideas in his fingers as he shaped both pipes.  I suggest some of these shared elements below (though I need more study to work out my preliminary reflections).

There's no better way to illustrate Toku's improvisatory creativity than to compare the "hole in the tail" of the "Spanish Dancer" with the "twirling tail" of the Giant Horn.   The personality of each pipe derives in large measure from how the tail is handled and on the face of it, the modern, somewhat severe horn has an entirely different character from the ornate and pliable "Spanish Dancer."  Yet, it seems to me that in both pipes, the "swirl of briar around a hole" expresses similar  compositional and aesthetic ideas.  Toku is "playing elegantly" with patterns of energy created by circular cross-currents of line and form ... and he is also improvising around "the implied space" in each pipe, and so delighting in those ambiguities about presence and absence, there and not-there, which traditionally engage Japanese art and culture.

The forward thrust of energy from the tail in both these pipes has extra ooph because it cuts across the central axis of the pipe.  This twisting swoop is more obvious in the Giant because the flow is contained in the arc of a continuous surface.  "Dancer's" forward energy is expressed in two separate elements:  the shank-end and the bowl's "head."  But the lines of energy point in the same direction - upward and forward with a kind of swirling propulsion (produced by all the "rococo" eddies of ornamentation [like the top-knot]).

The obvious wasp-waisting towards the rear of the "Spanish Dancer" (red arrows) is barely hinted at in the base of the Giant Horn;  but a close look reveals a slight tapering.

The Manta's foot swells gracefully near the front of the "Dancer" (though not as freely as in the true Manta), while the merest ghost of a contour suggests itself on the sides of the Giant Horn if you look at it from certain angles. (Blue arrows.)

Speaking of ghosts, the Manta center-ridge has become little more than a flattened edge flowing down the middle of the horn's base (white dots) like a fault-line (that breaks up occasionally into plateau).  But once at the front, this line extrudes in a point that expresses some of the forward thrust of the old Manta "goatee."

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