Pottery and porcelain, is one of the oldest Japanese crafts and art forms, dating back to the Neolithic period. Kilns have produced earthenware, pottery, stoneware, glazed pottery, glazed stoneware, porcelain, and blue-and-white ware. Japan has an exceptionally long and successful history of ceramic production. Earthenwares were created as early as the Jōmon period, giving Japan one of the oldest ceramic traditions in the world. Japan is further distinguished by the unusual esteem that ceramics holds within its artistic tradition, owing to the enduring popularity of the tea ceremony.
Celadon is a term for pottery denoting both wares glazed in the jade green celadon color, also known as greenware, and a type of transparent glaze, often with small cracks, that was first used on greenware, but later used on other porcelains. Celadon originated in China, though the term is purely European, and notable kilns such as the Longquan kiln in Zhejiang province are renowned for their celadon glazes. Celadon production later spread to other parts of East Asia, such as Japan and Korea as well as Southeast Asian countries such as Thailand. Eventually, European potteries produced some pieces, but it was never a major element there. Finer pieces are in porcelain, but both the color and the glaze can be produced in stoneware and earthenware. Most of the earlier Longquan celadon is on the border of stoneware and porcelain, meeting the Chinese but not the European definitions of porcelain.
Korean ceramic history begins with the oldest earthenware dating to around 8000 BC. Influenced by Chinese ceramics, Korean pottery developed a distinct style of its own, with its own shapes, such as the moon jar or maebyeong version of the Chinese meiping vase, and later styles of painted decoration. Korean ceramic trends had an influence on Japanese pottery and porcelain. Examples of classic Korean wares are the celadons of the Goryeo dynasty (918–1392) and the white porcelains of the Joseon dynasty (1392–1897).
Buncheong ware, or Punch'ong, is a form of traditional Korean stoneware, with a bluish-green tone. Pots are coated with a white slip, and decorative designs are painted on using an iron pigment. The style of stoneware arose in the 14th century and continues today.
Yoon Kwang-cho is a South Korean ceramic artist.
Kim Yik Yung, born in 1935 in Chongjin, Hamgyong, is a South Korean ceramic artist.
Oribe ware is a style of Japanese pottery that first appeared in the sixteenth century. It is a type of Japanese stoneware recognized by its freely-applied glaze as well as its dramatic visual departure from the more somber, monochrome shapes and vessels common in Raku ware of the time. The ceramics were often asymmetrical, embracing the eccentricity of randomized shapes. Deformed shapes were not at all uncommon. These shapes were achieved through the implementation of moulding as a technique, as opposed to working on a potter’s wheel. Sometimes, bowls were so deformed that they became difficult to use – whisking tea could even become a difficult task.
Dr. Shin Sang-Ho is an internationally known Korean ceramicist whose works can be found in many museums around the world. He is the former Dean, College of Fine Arts at Hongik University in Seoul, South Korea.
Satsuma ware is a type of Japanese pottery originally from Satsuma Province, southern Kyūshū. Today, it can be divided into two distinct categories: the original plain dark clay early Satsuma made in Satsuma from around 1600, and the elaborately decorated export Satsuma ivory-bodied pieces which began to be produced in the nineteenth century in various Japanese cities. By adapting their gilded polychromatic enamel overglaze designs to appeal to the tastes of western consumers, manufacturers of the latter made Satsuma ware one of the most recognized and profitable export products of the Meiji period.
Saint-Porchaire ware is the earliest very high quality French pottery. It is white lead-glazed earthenware often conflated with true faience, that was made for a restricted French clientele from perhaps the 1520s to the 1550s. Only about seventy pieces of this ware survive, all of them well known before World War II. None have turned up in the last half-century. It is characterized by the use of inlays of clay in a different coloured clay, and, as Victorian revivalists found, is extremely difficult to make.
Mishima ware refers to different types of imported and adopted Japanese pottery. Mishima originally refers to the shimamono pottery imported from the islands of Taiwan, Luzon, and "Amakawa". They were characterized by being roughly-made and often uneven, thus epitomizing the Japanese aesthetic of wabi-sabi. In later centuries, it came to refer to imported ceramics (Gohon) from Korea with the slip inlay style. This style was imitated and produced locally in Japan.
Hakuji (白磁) is a form of Japanese pottery and porcelain, normally white porcelain, which originated as an imitation of Chinese Dehua porcelain. Today the term is used in Japan to refer to plain white porcelain.
Tatsuzō Shimaoka was a Japanese mingei potter who studied under Shōji Hamada and later became the second Living National Treasure of Mashiko, Japan. He was best known for his unique Jōmon zogan style of pottery, and was a master of many slip decorating and firing techniques for pottery. Throughout his career, Shimaoka worked collaboratively with a group of workers, students, and apprentices from Japan and abroad. After supervising the loading of what would become his last noborigama firing in late 2007, Shimaoka collapsed, and died several weeks later in late 2007 from acute liver failure at Mashiko in Tochigi Prefecture.
Goryeo ware refers to all types of Korean pottery and porcelain produced during the Goryeo dynasty, from 918 to 1392, but most often refers to celadon (greenware).
Masahiro Mori was a Japanese ceramic designer born in Saga Prefecture, Japan. The well known "G-type Soy Sauce Bottle" he designed in 1958 won the 1st Good Design Award in 1960 and its production and sales have continued until today. He won the Good Design Award more than 110 times in his life. In describing his design philosophy, he stated, "My pleasure as a designer is to conceive of forms for daily use, and to create pieces for production in the factory, so that many people can appreciate and enjoy using them". He worked to design ceramic dishes suitable for the Japanese lifestyle in post-World War II.
Akiyama Yō was born in Shimonoseki city, Yamaguchi Prefecture, Japan in 1953. He is an artist specializing in ceramics, and was a part of the Sōdeisha aesthetic movement.
Lee Hun Chung (이헌정) is a South Korean artist. He is famous for working with ceramics and concrete in a wide range from small objects to large installations. Lee creates modern day pieces using techniques and colors dating back to the Joseon Dynasty. Lee attended Hong-ik University in Seoul from 1986–1991 with a BFA in ceramic sculpture. He continued his education throughout San Francisco and Korea, and getting a PH.D in architecture from Kyung-Won University in Gyeonggi-do, South Korea.
Yoshimi Futamura is a Japanese ceramic artist who has worked and lived in France since 1986. She was born in 1959, in Nagoya, Aichi Prefecture.
Matsuda Yuriko is a Japanese ceramic artist.
Jennifer Elizabeth Lee is a Scottish ceramic artist with an international reputation. Lee's distinctive pots are hand built using traditional pinch and coil methods. She has developed a method of colouring the pots by mixing metallic oxides into the clay before making. Her work is held in over forty museums and public collections worldwide, including The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, The Philadelphia Museum of Art, Los Angeles County Museum and the Victoria and Albert Museum. In 2018 Lee won the Loewe Craft Prize, an award initiated by Jonathan Anderson in 2017. The prize was presented to her at an awards ceremony at The Design Museum in London.
