HAMADA SHOJI ASH TRAY

Made by Hamada Shoji (1894 - 1978).

Decorated with a rich kaki glaze with wax resist motifs.

Used condition with a minor chip to the base and a kintsugi repair (see final photos)

Complete with original signed box.

Hamada Shoji (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. Hamada returned 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.