Image of Gallery in South Kensington
On display at V&A South Kensington
Ceramics, Room 142, The Lydia and Manfred Gorvy Gallery

Tea Bowl

ca. 1935-1950 (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.


Object details

Categories
Object type
Materials and techniques
Stoneware, thrown, with mottled grey glaze
Brief description
Tea bowl, stoneware with mottled grey glaze, made by Hamada Shoji, Japan (Mashiko), about 1935-1950
Physical description
Tea bowl of stoneware, thickly potted, with vertical sides constricted in the centre where they are encircled by two grooves, and cut in sharply below to a roughly potted foot.
Dimensions
  • Height: 8.6cm
  • Width: 9.2cm
Style
Gallery label
Tea-bowl, glazed stoneware. By Shoji Hamada. JAPANESE; about 1935-50. Given by Mrs. M.H. Tiltman. C.33-1966
Credit line
Given by Mrs M.H. Tiltman
Object history
Given to the donor by the potter, together with C.32 & C.34-1966.
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 references
  • 'Retrospective Exhibition of Shoji Hamada', National Museum of Modern Art (Tokyo, 1977)
  • Roberts, L.P. Dictionary of Japanese Artists (New York/Tokyo, 1977), p.38; Gisela Jahn and Anette Petersen-Brandhorst, Erde und Feuer, Deutsches Museum (Munich, 1984), pp.198 - 199
Collection
Accession number
C.33-1966

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Record createdFebruary 12, 2000
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