Traditional Japanese pottery and its influence on the American mid 20th century ceramic art

Abstract

The Japanese ceramic tradition that was to emerge along with other forms of traditional crafts through the Mingei Movement during the interwar period, as a form of reaction to the barbaric and expansive industrialization that swept Japan from the late nineteenth century, brought to light the traditional, moral, philosophical, functional, technical and aesthetic values that had begun to eliminate. Great Japanese artists, art critics and ceramists, such as Soetsu Yanagi and Shōji Hamada, as well as the emblematic personality of the English potter Bernard Leach, after caring for the revival of Japanese pottery, believed that they should disseminate the philosophy of traditional Japanese pottery around the world and especially in the post-war U.S.A. where it found a significant response from great American potters and clay artists, but also from the educational system of the country. This article aims to focus precisely on the significant influence that postwar American ceramic art received from traditional Japanese pottery ideals. The author in order to document the reasons for this new order of things, will study and analyze the work of important American potters and ceramic artists of the time, and will highlight the social, philosophical and cultural context of the time in which the whole endeavor took place.