Tsujimura Kai

  • Exhibitions

  • biography

    Tsujimura Kai is the second son of one of the most gifted potters active in Japan today, Tsujimura Shirō. Despite his youth, Kai has inherited from his father a great facility with the wheel and a magician’s touch in his ash-glazing resulting from his command of the process of wood-burning firings. Influenced by Momoyama era aesthetics, he creates powerful functional vessels that are both dramatic and sensual. Unlike most of his contemporaries, who closely control the firing process, Kai delights in the unexpected and incorporates chance into his creative process. His oeuvre includes in addition to ash-glazed vessels, ceramics with translucent glaze (egarasu) as well as white slip glaze (kohiki).

    1976 Born in Nara Prefecture
    1994 Upon graduating from high school, starts his career as ceramicist studying under his father, Tsujimura Shirō
    2000 Opened own kiln in Sakurai city, Nara Prefecture and started to work independently

    Public Collections:

    Philadelphia Museum of Art
    Minneapolis Museum of Art, MN
    Brooklyn Museum of Art, NY

  • Tsujimura Kai

    Tsujimura Kai

  • bio pt 1

    bio pt 1

    Born 1976, Nara Prefecture, Japan

    TSUJIMURA KAI is the second son of one of the most gifted potters active in Japan today, Tsujimura Shirō. Despite his relative youth, Kai has inherited from his father a great facility with the wheel and a magician’s touch in his ash-glazing, resulting from his command of the process of wood-burning firings. Influenced by Momoyama era aesthetics, he creates powerful functional vessels that are both dramatic and sensual. Unlike most of his contemporaries, who closely control the firing process, Kai delights in the unexpected and incorporates chance into his creative process. His oeuvre includes, in addition to ash-glazed vessels, ceramics with translucent glaze (egarasu) as well as white slip glaze (kohiki).