Shoji Hamada | 1894 - 1978

Shoji Hamada (1894-1978) remains for many the leading studio potter of the 20th century, a charismatic artist whose prodigious energy and natural ease as a thrower and decorator did most to bring the established language of Japanese form and glazing into the modern age. With Bernard Leach he helped to consolidate a new studio pottery movement in the West, his early work at the Leach Pottery in St Ives part of this catalyst. With Leach and Cardew he also generated interest in early English slipware, returning to Japan in 1923 and setting up a studio in Mashiko eight years later. Here he remained until his death. Hamada developed a particularly fluent stoneware with incised, painted and poured decoration that was both generous and economic, work that gave the materials used a new prominence of their own.

David Whiting

'One rarely meets a person who, after spending several years studying and travelling, taking influences from many places, decided at the age of twenty-seven what he wanted his life style to be and proceeded in a straight, unwavering path to build this life. I believe that Hamada is the most completely intergrated twentieth-century artist-potter we have; his home, his life-style, his thoughts and work flow in one harmonious stream'.