BRICK BY BRICK

摘要

There is cause for celebration in Mashiko. A tradition that has influenced studio pottery throughout the world is being reborn, and Shoji Hamada's great seven-chamber noborigami climbing kiln is ready to fire. When Hamada returned to Japan in 1923, after spending three years working and studying with Bernard Leach in St Ives, he was faced with the challenge of establishing a new pottery in the aftermath of the Great Kanto Earthquake, which destroyed much of Tokyo, including his home town of Kawasaki. He chose the rural pottery town of Mashiko as his new home, and built a pottery based on the mingei aesthetic of a healthy, humanistic beauty born of an unassuming traditional lifestyle. His work, and the work of his colleagues in the Mingei movement, affected the course of twentieth-century studio ceramics throughout the world. Mashiko thrived, and in 1955 Hamada was one of the first potters to be designated a Living National Treasure of Japan.