Shimaoka Tatsuzo

Shimaoka is the youngest potter among the three famous practioners of the folk-art (mingei) style, who took inspiration from the traditional Chinese, Korean, and Japanese glaze stles and reworked them for their individual styles. The other two potters are Kawai Kanjiro (1890-1966) and Hamada Shoji (1894-1978), Shimaoka's teacher and neighbor. Although Shimaoka was much influenced by Hamada, he developed a distinctive technique and style of his own. Inspired by the rope-impressed Japanese pottery of the Jomon period (8000-3000 BC), he used cords which were made by his own father, a professional cord designer and maker, to impress the soft clay and filled in the indented areas with white slip, a technique he adopted from Korean punch'ong ware (known as mishima ware in Japan). Shimaoka uses this technique so effectively and frequently that it has become his trade mark.