Dish
1972 (made)
| Artist/Maker | |
| Place of origin |
Hamada Shoji (1894-1978) was one of the leading potters of the Japanese Mingei (Folk Craft) movement. He was closely associated both with Yanagi Soetsu (1889-1961), the philosopher-critic on whose theories the movement was founded, and the pioneer English studio potter Bernard Leach (1887-1979), whom he helped establish the Leach Pottery in St Ives, Cornwall, during the early 1920s.
The Mingei movement developed in early twentieth-century Japan as a social and aesthetic crusade. It held ideas in common with the English Arts and Crafts theorists John Ruskin and William Morris about the value of hand-work and the negative effects of industrialisation and mass production. It actively sought to save and revive Japanese folk-craft traditions, which were becoming sidelined due to the forces of modernisation and urbanisation, and was part of a broader cultural movment in which Japan sought to articulate and assert a sense of national identity in the face of burgeoning westernisation.
The Mingei movement developed in early twentieth-century Japan as a social and aesthetic crusade. It held ideas in common with the English Arts and Crafts theorists John Ruskin and William Morris about the value of hand-work and the negative effects of industrialisation and mass production. It actively sought to save and revive Japanese folk-craft traditions, which were becoming sidelined due to the forces of modernisation and urbanisation, and was part of a broader cultural movment in which Japan sought to articulate and assert a sense of national identity in the face of burgeoning westernisation.
Object details
| Categories | |
| Object type | |
| Materials and techniques | Stoneware, press-moulded, painted and glazed |
| Brief description | Square dish, stoneware with brown glaze and painted and trailed designs in green and brown, made by Hamada Shoji, Japan (Mashiko), 1972. |
| Physical description | A flat-based square dish with sides spreading part-way and then angled more acutely to the rim; heavily potted, and standing on a low, flattened square foot. Press-moulded. Greyish stoneware, the sides covered in and outside with a thick and lustrous rust-brown glaze and having painted or trailed round the inside four bold strokes of copper-green, with a simple plant motif painted on the plain glaze covering the centre. (Box: With box, inscribed inside lid; 'Persimmon glaze with green cross decoration, iron-decorated square dish; Shoji; Sho'; paper sticker on base with number '350'.) |
| Dimensions |
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| Style | |
| Gallery label |
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| Credit line | Given by the potter |
| Object history | Presented to the Museum by the potter on the occasion of the Prime Minister's visit to Japan in 1972. |
| Production | Artist: Hamada Shoji (1894 - 1978) Biographical reference: Laurance P. Roberts 'Dictionary of Japanese artists' (Tokyo/New York, 1976), p.38; Gisela Jahn and Anette Petersen-Brandhorst, 'Erde und Feuer' Deutsches Museum (Munich, 1984), pp.198-199 |
| Subject depicted | |
| Summary | Hamada Shoji (1894-1978) was one of the leading potters of the Japanese Mingei (Folk Craft) movement. He was closely associated both with Yanagi Soetsu (1889-1961), the philosopher-critic on whose theories the movement was founded, and the pioneer English studio potter Bernard Leach (1887-1979), whom he helped establish the Leach Pottery in St Ives, Cornwall, during the early 1920s. The Mingei movement developed in early twentieth-century Japan as a social and aesthetic crusade. It held ideas in common with the English Arts and Crafts theorists John Ruskin and William Morris about the value of hand-work and the negative effects of industrialisation and mass production. It actively sought to save and revive Japanese folk-craft traditions, which were becoming sidelined due to the forces of modernisation and urbanisation, and was part of a broader cultural movment in which Japan sought to articulate and assert a sense of national identity in the face of burgeoning westernisation. |
| Bibliographic reference | International Exhibition of Ceramics, V & A Museum (London, 1972), no 1.
'Retrospective exhibition of Shoji Hamada', National Museum of Modern Art, (Tokyo, 1977) |
| Collection | |
| Accession number | FE.1-1973 |
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| Record created | February 12, 2000 |
| Record URL |
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