Published in conjunction with the exhibition “Birds of Dawn: Pioneersof Japan's Sōdeisha Ceramic Movement,” organized by Joan B. Mirviss, Ltd.,New York, from March 16 – April 29, 2011.
Names are given in Japanese sequence with family name ﬁrst.
In the case of Japanese individuals residing abroad, their names
are given according to Western custom with family name last.
Photography: Richard Goodbody
Archival photographs courtesy of Yagi Akira and Yamada Akira
Project manager: Nami Hoppin
Print Production Management: Amie Cooper and Mikki Kalar, The Actualizers
Design: Lorraine Wild with Joe Potts, Green Dragon Ofﬁce, Los Angeles
Editing: Susan L. Peters
Printed in Singapore by CS Graphics Pte., Ltd.
ISBN 978-0-615-42703-4© 2011 by Joan B. Mirviss, Ltd.

FRONT COVER

BACK COVER

Suzuki Osamu (1926-2001)
Hanayagu tori;
Flamboyant Bird
1991

Yamada Hikaru (1923-2001)
Kokutō no sukuriin;
Smoke-blackened Screen
1983

22.63 x 10.0 x 5.25 inches
Stoneware with red slip and ash glazes

16.0 x 16.0 x 4.0 inches
Smoke-blackened stoneware
Collection of Pilar CondeCONTENTS

6Introduction
Joan B. Mirviss

11Sōdeisha: Engine Room of the Japanese Avant-GardeRupert Faulkner

19

Kurafuto, “Good Design,” Sake, and Soy Sauce:
Consumer Ceramics in Postwar JapanJoe Earle

27

When Clay Mattered: Ceramics in Postwar Sculpture
Glenn Adamson

35
67
81

Catalogue
SUZUKI OSAMUYAGI KAZUOYAMADA HIKARU

96

Tōreki102

Bibliography

INTRODUCTION

This publication and the related exhibition span more thanﬁfty years of the work of the founders of Sōdeisha — Suzuki Osamu, Yagi Kazuo and Yamada
Hikaru. They are the realization of my dream to present this inﬂuential avant-garde ceramics
movement to the American audience in a comprehensive manner.
In the aftermath of the Second World War, at a time of severe resource scarcity in Japan, agroup of ceramic artists with similar visions came together in Kyoto to promote a new style ofnon-traditional sculptural ceramics. The result was the Sōdeisha movement, which included anexhibition system that gave the participating artists freedom from the established orthodoxy
and provided a vehicle for artistic dialogue. The name Sōdeisha, derived from a Chinese
ceramic term for a glazing fault, translates literally as “Crawling through Mud Association”
and was meant to express the artists’ complete absorption with their earth-bound medium.
Breaking free from traditional ceramics, these artists also looked to poetry, music,
surrealism, cubism, ancient art forms, and Western literature as points of departure.
Inspired by diverse European artists such as Joan Miró, Paul Klee, Constantin Brancusi andPablo Picasso, they created work—complete with poetic titles—that they termed “objets”
borrowing the French term, but with clear links to Japanese culture. Unlike sculptors orpainters, they viewed clay as the basis of their art. While this medium demanded ﬁnely
honed techniques and processes, it also enabled them the ﬂexibility to explore a wide rangeof themes and forms. As early as 1951, the work of these Sōdeisha artists was shown inParis, at the Musée Cernuschi, together with that of numerous other Japanese ceramists andmade a signiﬁcant impression on the European audience of the time. Work by Yagi Kazuo wasacquired by savvy Americans as early as 1950 and by 1962 had entered the collection of theMuseum of Modern Art, New York.

6The art of Suzuki Osamu, Yagi Kazuo and Yamada Hikaru has captivated me fornearly three decades. My unforgettable encounters with both Suzuki and Yamada at theirexhibitions and their homes, towards the ends of their lives, are memories I will cherish
always. In addition, it has been wonderful to get to know some of the Yagi and Yamada family
members and their encouragement has proved to be essential. I have been acquiring andselling works by these artists since the 1990s and all but one work in the catalogue section
are either currently available or have passed through my hands at one time.
This publication marks my thirty-ﬁfth year as a professional in the world of Japanese art. It
may be surprising to some that although my initial focus as a dealer was on prints and paintings,
my earliest start was in clay, back in 1972, when I traveled the length of Japan with a few othercollege students on a two-month ceramic tour. But I did not enter this ﬁeld professionally
until 1984 after being dazzled by the exhibition at the Smithsonian Institution, “JapaneseCeramics Today,” organized by the pioneering patron, Kikuchi Tomo. To this day, her Suzuki
Osamu “Horse” sculpture stands as one of my all-time favorites. Since that seminal exhibition,and several others—especially Frederick Baekeland’s widely-seen “Modern Japanese
Ceramics in American Collections,” Joe Earle’s “Contemporary Clay: Japanese Ceramics for aNew Century,” and Louise Cort’s and Bert Winther-Tamaki’s groundbreaking “Isamu Noguchi
and Modern Japanese Ceramics”—the appreciation of modern and contemporary Japaneseceramic art in this country and abroad has increased exponentially.
First I wish to thank my dream team of writers who enthusiastically supported thisproject with their excellent essays—Glenn Adamson, Joe Earle and Rupert Faulkner. The
incredibly knowledgeable Louise Allison Cort, Curator of Ceramics at the Freer Gallery ofArt and the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, most graciously accepted the role of “reader” and her
insights proved invaluable.

7Early on, a number of people opened doors for me in Japan and I must acknowledge thegenerosity and assistance of those individuals: Yagi Akira and Sakiyo; Yamada Akira, Mizuhoand Yuri; Kusaka Chieko; Aoi Masami; Kikuchi Tomo and Koike Kimiko; Nakamura Yukio;
Ohara Noriko; Murata Shiro; Kuroda Koji; and the Kososhi Family. In addition to Amie Cooper,
our patient and reliable project coordinator, my gallery team has proved indispensable andindefatigable throughout this project and special thanks must be given to Nami Hoppin
for her graphic ingenuity and meticulous attention to every detail, and to Rie Nakano andMartin Gewirtz for their patient efforts. Richard Goodbody’s superb photography, spanningthe entire length of this project, is readily visible throughout this publication. Equally essential,
I also thank my many loyal and wonderful clients, both private collectors and museum curators,
without whose support none of this would have been remotely feasible. On a personal note, I
wish to express my eternal thanks to my husband Bob Levine, who shares my passion for thisﬁeld and himself purchased our ﬁrst work by Suzuki Osamu more than twenty-ﬁve years ago
when I could not afford to do so.
Joan B. Mirviss8

FIG 1

Sōdeisha group members at the seventh Sōdeisha exhibition,
October 1952. Left to right (front) Nakajima Kiyoshi and Yamada
Hikaru; (back) Kanzaki Kenzō, Yagi Kazuo and Suzuki Osamu.
Courtesy of Yagi Akira and Yamada Akira.

9

SUZUKI OSAMUOPPOSITE

20 Bakei;
Horse Figure
1982
20.0 x 7.0 x 6.0 inches
Stoneware with red slip and ash glazes
RIGHT

21 Ten ni itaru kumo;
Cloud Rising toward Heaven
1989
24.5 x 17.5 x 7.25 inches
Stoneware with red slip and ash glazes

51

YAGI KAZUO

BELOW

50 Tetsuzō gan – hana tsubo;
Flower Vase with Iron-glazed
Floral Pattern
195910.25 x 6.0 inches
White shigaraki clay with black iron glaze
Similar work exhibited and published:
YAGI 1980 pl. 35; YAGI 1981 pl. 22; YAGI
2004 pl. 35, p. 62. Similar work won Grand
Prize at the Second International CeramicCompetition, Belgium 1959.
Collection of Carol and Jeffery Horvitz
OPPOSITE

51 Tetsu-e tsubo – shō chō;Vessel with Designs in Iron Glaze –Flying Bird Motif1959
10.0 x 8.0 inches
White shigaraki clay with combed design inblack iron glaze
Similar work exhibited and published: YAGI1980 pl. 34; YAGI 1981 pl. 21; YAGI 2004
pl. 34, p. 62.

72

73

YAMADA HIKARU

BELOW

78 Silver-glazed screen
ca. 1993
22.0 x 15.75 x 3.5 inches
Glazed stoneware
Exhibited: Contemporary Clay: JapaneseCeramics for the New Century, JapanSociety, New York 2006. Exhibitedand published: YAMADA 2004
pl. 298, p. 241.
Collection of Stanley andMary Anne Snider
OPPOSITE

79 Gindei sukuriin;
Silver-glazed Screen
1993
25.38 x 16.0 x 4.13 inches
Glazed stoneware
Exhibited: 45th Sōdeisha Memorial
Exhibition, Fukuoka Prefecture ArtMuseum, Kyushu 1993; Gallery Nakamura, Kyoto 1993. Exhibited andpublished: YAMADA 1994 pl. 200,p. 88; YAMADA 2004 pl. 285, p. 121.

94

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Joan B. Mirviss has been an expert and leading dealer in Japanese art, specializing in modernand contemporary ceramics, ukiyo-e prints, paintings, and screens for thirty-ﬁve years.
Mirviss has organized numerous contemporary ceramics exhibitions, bringing the workof celebrated artists as well as hitherto unknown talents to the attention of the American
public. She is responsible for placing the work of Japanese ceramic artists in the collectionsof over thirty-ﬁve museums in this country. In addition to her numerous articles for museum
publications, magazines and journals, she curated the 1995 exhibition for the Phoenix Art
Museum and Los Angeles County Museum of Art and co-authored the accompanying book,
The Frank Lloyd Wright Collection of Surimono. In 2000, she curated the exhibition and wrote
the publication, Jewels of Japanese Printmaking: Surimono of the Bunka and Bunsei Era
for the Ota Memorial Art Museum in Tokyo.