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Most Important and Most Popular
Japanese Ceramists in Last 100 Years
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The leading Japanese ceramic art quarterly Honoho Geijutsu recently published an interesting list in its latest issue. It deals with who are considered the most important (juuyou) and popular (ninki) potters of the 20th century.
The two categories were voted on by three separate groups; curators and critics, gallery owners, and readers of the magazine. Twenty people in each group were asked to name their top ten in each category; a total of 57 people replied. After the lists there were a few comments about significant changes, movements, and advances some of which I'll summarize later on. First the lists and the number following each name is the number of votes they received.
MOST IMPORTANT -- SURVEY RESULTS
Click image or name (when available) for more.
In the curator and critics voting section they had Yagi, Tomimoto, Arakawa, Itaya, and Kamoda in the top five followed by Kawai, Hamada, Rosanjin, Koie, and Kaneshige.
The gallery group's top ten was: Tomimoto, Kamoda, Kawai, Kato Tokuro, Itaya, Yagi, Ishiguro, Rosanjin, Okabe, and Kaneshige.
Honoho Geijutsu readers, meanwhile, voted for Kato Tokuro, Kaneshige, Hamada, Arakawa, Itaya, Kawai, Tomimoto, Rosanjin, Kamoda, and Yagi.
As you can see almost all names overlapped except that of Koie and Okabe.
In the popular portion voting went like this:
MOST POPULAR -- SURVEY RESULTS
Click image or name (when available) for more.
A long list of those getting three votes were: Itaya, Kato Hajime, Koie, Koinuma Michio, Shimizu, Tamura Koichi, Nakamura Kinpei, Nishioka Koju, Fujiwara, Furutani Michio, and Yamamoto. An even longer list of two's -- Abe Anjin, Kato Kiyoyuki, Kato Takuo, Kato Tokuro, Kawase Shinobu, Kawamoto Goro, Kinjo Jiro, Shigematsu Ayumi, Shimaoka Tatsuzo, Suzuki Osamu, Tsuji, Tokuda, Nagae Shigekazu, Hamada, Fujimoto, Miwa Kyuwa, Morino Taimei, Yoshida Yoshihiko, and Wada Morihiro - whew.
The curators had Kawakita, Kamoda, and Tomimoto as their top three faves while the gallery group placed Kamoda, Yagi, and Okabe in the those slots.
The readers surprisingly choose Bizen sake utensil master Nakamura Rokuro as their king -- what a bunch of lushes! Well, I shouldn't talk -- I just love sake and treasure my Nakamura guinomi.
At two was Kakurezaki in a tie with Kaneshige. I think it's a good match -- for when history looks at Kaneshige they see Momoyama Bizen in the Showa era. Yet when history looks back at Kakurezaki they will see his original Heisei Bizen. These two masters are the defining influences for Bizen past and present.
The voting very much reflected the major trends that happened in the last hundred years; revitalizing of past traditions (Kaneshige, Arakawa, Miwa, etc.), saving some from sinking (the mingei movement -- Hamada), and the thoroughly original ceramic artists in Yagi, Kamoda, Okabe, and Kakurezaki.
Collectors in the west might be surprised to see that Shimaoka was basically a footnote and many an unfamiliar name have their names in lights here. If anyone has any questions on names in the list please do contact us.
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