Low hexagonal covered box with sometsuke (cobalt-blue) striped patterning along sides; titled, Rain Shower on the Yamato River
1961
Glazed porcelain
1 1/2 x 6 3/8 in.
EXHIBITED:
Tomimoto Kenkichi sakutō gojūnen kinenten (Tomimoto Kenkichi: Exhibition Commemorating the 50th anniversary of his ceramic making), Takashimaya Art Gallery, Tokyo, 1961
PUBLISHED:
Tomimoto Kenkichi sakutō gojūnen kinenten (Tomimoto Kenkichi: Exhibition Commemorating the 50th anniversary of his ceramic making), Takashimaya Art Gallery, Tokyo, 1961, p. 3.
NOTE:
This work is published as No. 1 in the exhibition catalogue.
Tomimoto Kenkichi has long been considered the most influential Japanese ceramic artist of the twentieth century. Not born into a traditional pottery family, he held a much broader view of ceramics. A technical innovator and genius with surface decoration, he was also the founder of the ceramics department at Kyoto City University of Arts, which profoundly changed the course of direction for generations of clay artists. As a teacher, he expounded on the importance of individuality, originality, and the confluence of forms and patterns. As an artist, his level of technique, attention to detail and innovative spirit only further underscores his place as a master of ceramic art.
Tall standing diamond-shaped form with blue marbleized sections cascading down each side and with pâte de verre cast clear glass cover and gintekisai “silver mist” beaded glazing
2023
Marbleized porcelain, “silver mist overglaze,” cast glass
28 1/2 x 12 3/4 x 7 1/8 in.
Object: Standing rectangular blue-and-white marbleized box form on four legs with gintekisai (“silver mist”) beaded glazing with pâte de verre clear cast glass cover
2023
Marbleized porcelain, “silver mist” glaze, cast glass
6 3/4 x 6 3/4 x 3 in.
Throughout his career, KONDŌ TAKAHIRO (b. 1958) has striven to determine his own independent artistic identity through extensive experimentation. His patented and highly distinctive “silver mist” (gintekisai) glaze, which is an amalgam of platinum, gold, silver and glass frit, ranges in appearance from a subtle shimmer to a stream of molten drops that cling and pool over the porcelain surfaces. Water has been his principal theme for many decades, as he has explored both its creative and destructive qualities.
“In Takahiro’s work, we have a master craftsman, a gifted sculptor, and a conceptual artist all in one. This potent combination has allowed him to radically extend Japanese ceramic art without being contained by that category, or indeed any other.”
Glenn Adamson in Transcendent Clay: KONDO A Century of Japanese Ceramic Art (Lowe Art Museum, Miami: 2023), p. 124.
Mold-cast self-portrait sculpture decorated in sometsuke (cobalt-blue) painterly camellia designs; titled, Reflection
2010
Glazed porcelain
9 1/4 x 6 3/4 x 8 5/8 in.
This gallery exhibition is presented in conjunction with Porcelains in the Mist: The Kondō Family of Ceramicists at the Brooklyn Museum in New York. The artist Kondō Takahiro will be present for in-person events hosted by Joan B Mirviss LTD during Asia Week New York.
Porcelains in the Mist was first shown at the Lowe Art Museum in Miami, FL under the title Transcendent Clay: KONDŌ, A Century of Japanese Ceramic Art and accompanied by an exhibition catalogue of the same name. Drawn from the Carol and Jeffrey Horvitz Collection, the Kondō family exhibition features over sixty artworks from four different Kondō artists. It will continue to travel to other US museum locations after Brooklyn, starting with the Ringling Museum of Art, the Ackland Art Museum, and the Phoenix Art Museum.
Standing vertical ribbed, curled leaf-shaped sculptural vessel with furling mouth titled, Portrait
2023
Glazed stoneware
18 1/8 x 15 3/8 x 9 7/8 in.
Inspired by the curling leaves of the lotus, hosta and orchid plants, Inaba Chikako creates elegantly furled sculptural vessels that evoke her local vegetation. Her fluted and curving, ribbed, leaf-like vessels appear ready to contain droplets of dew or rain. A thick, opaque white glaze is applied over a coil-built, firmly walled stoneware body with carefully carved “veins.” More recently, her distinctive forms have become more abstracted and sculptural, reflective of an artist pushing herself creatively in new directions. Her work has been garnering institutional attention and is currently on view at the Art Institute of Chicago in Radical Clay.
Biomorphic bulbous standing sculpture decorated with varied cobalt-blue polka dots; titled, Absurdity
2018
Glazed porcelain
22 1/2 x 17 3/4 x 11 3/4 in.
Inspired by European modernism and surrealism, Nakashima’s blue-and-white polka dotted sculptures have gained him international recognition. As a university student, encountering the work of Sōdeisha artists and specifically that of Kumakura Junkichi prompted him to seek an apprenticeship with Kumakura and to further develop his interest in abstract ceramic sculptures. In 2002, he began working in porcelain instead of stoneware. As he found his distinctive style, the blue dots on white porcelain were intended to directly reference the Japanese tradition of sometsuke when paired with his challenging, abstracted globular forms that have found a place in international contemporary art. He was previously a professor at Aichi University of Education and is currently the Director of Tajimi City Pottery Design and Technical Center.
Biomorphic bulbous standing sculpture decorated with varied cobalt-blue polka dots; titled, Absurdity
2018
Glazed porcelain
22 1/2 x 17 3/4 x 11 3/4 in.
Inspired by European modernism and surrealism, Nakashima’s blue-and-white polka dotted sculptures have gained him international recognition. As a university student, encountering the work of Sōdeisha artists and specifically that of Kumakura Junkichi prompted him to seek an apprenticeship with Kumakura and to further develop his interest in abstract ceramic sculptures. In 2002, he began working in porcelain instead of stoneware. As he found his distinctive style, the blue dots on white porcelain were intended to directly reference the Japanese tradition of sometsuke when paired with his challenging, abstracted globular forms that have found a place in international contemporary art. He was previously a professor at Aichi University of Education and is currently the Director of Tajimi City Pottery Design and Technical Center.
Botanical-inspired sculptural form with bulbous base titled, Form 20-4
Stoneware with matte glaze in white with gradations of gray
2020
Stoneware with matte glaze
12 3/4 x 15 7/8 x 15 3/4 in.
Fujino Sachiko began her studies in the world of fashion-design in Kyoto. A pottery class in the 1980s first introduced her to the ceramic world and resulted in her becoming the student of the pioneering female ceramic artist Tsuboi Asuka, herself a pupil of the celebrated Tomimoto Kenkichi. Drawing on her textile background, Fujino folds and tucks clay with the deftness of manipulating cloth. She gently textures the surface with matte slip sprayed through an airbrush. Her latest works are in gradations of charcoal-gray or white, enhancing their evocative silhouettes. Though inspired by botanicals, the artist says her work is not directly representative of flowers.
Faceted standing rectangular sculpture with tapering, rounded edges decorated with sometsuke (cobalt-blue) bands; titled, Wind That Carries Away Misfortune
1989
Glazed porcelain
15 3/8 x 10 5/8 x 5 in.
Miyanaga Tōzan comes from a 100-year-old line of potters based in Kyoto. He first studied in the sculpture department at the Kyoto City University of Arts before coming to New York to study at the Art Students League. Upon his return in the early 1960s, he began to create large, powerful sculptures. He soon joined and became a major figure within the avant-garde Sōdeisha group, which focused on non-functional clay art. Over the intervening decades, he has explored new ways of expressing the timeless beauty of seihakuji (bluish-white) and sometsuke glazed porcelain. Miyanaga has long been considered a ceramic virtuoso.
(1944-2008)
Blue-and-white abstract patterned incense burner
2001
Glazed stoneware
7 3/8 x 4 1/2 x 4 1/4 in.
For several decades, Wada Morihiro was the most respected Japanese artist working with polychrome decorated surfaces. Moving from Kansai and Kyoto, where he was the student of Tomimoto Kenkichi for several years, to the ceramic town of Kasama, enabled Wada to break free of the more classical aesthetics of Kyoto and develop his own repertoire of motifs, shapes, and techniques that were more closely aligned to the work of local master, Kamoda Shōji. Wada employed a very broad range of surface patterning using a multiplicity of techniques, including slip decoration, inlay, wax-resist, carving, underglaze, blue-and–white and blown-on glaze.
Square vessel with angled shoulders and long neck decorated with Japanese crested ibises
2023
Porcelain with polychrome kutani enamel glazes
13 1/2 x 10 x 10 in.
A master of kutani glazing, Takegoshi Jun inherited the traditional techniques of his family. In search of his true passion, he found it at an exhibition of ko-kutani in Tokyo. Despite his heritage, this was the first time he truly appreciated his family’s patrimony of polychrome glazing. This revelation set him on his course to reinvent the classical technique for the twenty-first century. As a brilliant painter, he has used ko-kutani as a stepping-stone to formulate an unrivaled array of colorful glazes that bring his personal kachō (bird-and-flower) imagery to life on his slab, hand-built (tatara) porcelain forms.
Matching, asymmetrical pair of nezumi shino (gray Shino)-glazed, flattened, circular flower vessels with camellia and plum blossom design
1989
Glazed stoneware
17 x 12 1/8 x 8 1/4 in.; 14 x 9 5/8 x 8 in.
Wakao Toshisada is a leading artist specializing in nezumi shino (gray Shino) ware, a type of ceramic with a long tradition originating in the Momoyama period (16th century). Though he chiefly produces tableware, Wakao also produces large-scale plates and vases in abstract forms. These daring sculptural silhouettes contrast with the natural motifs inspired by the Rinpa school of painting that decorate the vessels. To achieve such intricate decoration, he applies several layers of glaze and slip over multiple firings. He was designated Intangible Cultural Property of Gifu Prefecture for Shino ware in 2003.
Art of the People: Exploring the Mingei Film Archive
Thursday, April 18, 2024 at 5pm EDT
Perhaps one of the best-known aspects of Japanese ceramics in the West remains the Mingei folk art movement and its leading proponents, Hamada Shōji and Bernard Leach. Because of their advocacy and publicly facing roles, aided greatly by the medium of film, the timeless qualities of Mingei have figured prominently in the perception of Japanese art in the West throughout the twentieth century. For this unique ZOOM Gallery Talk, filmmaker Marty Gross shares with us his extraordinary mission to restore, record, preserve, and archive the films of and about Mingei from the early twentieth century in his project, The Mingei Film Archive. He will share with us rare footage of prewar Japan and of pottery production in centers such as Tamba and Mashiko. As a potter himself, Marty Gross shares with us how the Mingei Film Archive developed and how his personal journey merged his two great artistic interests to create this remarkable and irreplaceable resource for ceramics and for Japanese art lovers.
Panelist: Marty Gross, filmmaker and founder of The Mingei Film Archive, based in Toronto, Canada
Moderated by Joan Mirviss
Eternal Partnership: Japanese Ceramics in Blue & White
March 14 – April 19, 2024
The most visually striking color combination for centuries, blue and white has been paired effectively in all types of Japanese art, but most prominently and successfully in its ceramics. For Asia Week New York 2024, we present the enduring legacy of this timeless aesthetic, and its dynamic expressions in Japanese contemporary clay, through the lens of the esteemed Kyoto-based Kondō family. Across multiple generations, their mastery of sometsuke (cobalt blue-and-white porcelain) culminates in the work of our celebrated gallery artist, Kondō Takahiro, who broke free of his forefathers’ traditions with his patented gintekisai “silver mist” overglaze on dramatic sculptural work.
Eternal Partnership: Japanese Ceramics in Blue & White includes masterful work by twenty additional Japanese ceramic artists applying blue and/or white across a wide range of innovative forms and styles.
This exhibition is presented in conjunction with Porcelains in the Mist: The Kondō Family of Ceramicists at the Brooklyn Museum. The artist Kondō Takahiro will be present for in-person events hosted by Joan B Mirviss LTD during Asia Week New York.
To learn more and view our online catalog, click here.
