Takeshi Yasuda

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Welcome to the official site of Takeshi Yasuda.

A masterly thrower who combines Japanese tradition with a very personal attitude to the making of functional ceramics in stoneware, high fired earthenware, and porcelain.

Introduction by David Hamilton:

When I was a young art school student in Bradford I remember a painting tutor commenting when he saw me with a copy of A Farewell to Arms, 'What wouldn't I give to be 18 again and reading Hemingway for the first time.' In this remark lay the promise for me of delights and thrills to come. I feel the same way about the prospect of someone coming to Takeshi Yasuda's work for the first time: the material presence, the way it is thrown and shaped and the sensuality of the formal language are to be physically experienced, handled if possible and then contemplated at leisure.

About Takeshi Yasuda

Takeshi Yasuda is a Japanese potter who was born in Tokyo, Japan in 1943. Yasuda trained at the Daisei-Gama Pottery in Mashiko from 1963 to 1966 and established his first studio there. His early work consisted of ash-glazed stoneware, after which he explored Sancai and Creamware. Most recently Yasuda has been working with celadon-glazed porcelain.

Yasuda settled in Britain in 1973. He has taught at various art schools and universities across the United Kingdom and was Professor of Applied Arts at the University of Ulster. From 2005 until 2010 Yasuda served as Director of the Pottery Workshop in Jingdezhen, China, after which he established his own studio in the Jingdezhen Sculpture Factory.

For futher information please contact Takeshi Yasuda at:

takeshi [at] takeshiyasuda.com

Early Work

For most of my early career, including the first ten years in Mashiko, I worked in stoneware using ash glazes in reduction firing. That is where I felt most comfortable despite having had a few flings with salt and anagama type wood firing.

Sancai

When I undertook a residency at Cleveland Crafts Centre in Middlesbrough in 1984, I came face to face with an electric kiln. Whilst salt and anagama firings may not have been favorites, firing in an electric kiln had never been even a consideration. Only the circumstance forced me to deal with it and I took this challenge very reluctantly. After a year or so eventually the 'Sancai' series was born. Sancia is the terminology for tri-colour ware as in Tang Sancai, which includes Nisai (bi-colour) and Yonsai (quad-colour). My Sancai is only an approximation of Tang Sancai, which is burial ware fired at the very low temperature of 850-950deg C. The clay body (Hyplas 71 grogged and darkened) is covered with white slip. The fluid and tinted transparent glaze (0.5% iron) is the base glaze. Two coloured glazes (mixture of 100 parts base glaze with 4 parts copper for green or 8 parts manganese for brown) are applied thickly on top of the base glaze to encourage running streaks during the firing.

Creamware

One day at the University of Ulster around 1993 I found this small yellow milk jug on my office desk. I had forgotten about making this jug but it must have been the porcelain bisque jug that I had glazed with the school's standard earthenware which I then asked a student to fire. It was just a passing interest. At that time I was experimenting with porcelain but not convinced by the quality I was getting from conventional reduction firing, nor for that matter from salt firing which my colleague Peter Meanley kindly organised for me. I was not expecting a miracle and forgot about this small jug, but when I saw it fired I liked it very much. Its warm yellow glaze had an easy optimism rather than the sombre seriousness of reduction porcelain or the familiar characteristics of salt firing. Clive Fiddis, another colleague in the ceramics department, dropped in to my office for a cup of coffee. In those days Belfast was not known for good coffee and Clive knew where to go to get one. He picked up the milk jug and exclaimed, "Ah! Creamware!"

Creamware is an English white ware that was most fashionable at the time of the industrial revolution. It was made widely around Stoke-on-Trent by many factories including Wedgwood. Wedgwood marketed their version as Queensware after the patronage of Queen Anne. The white clay body that became available at the time was bisque fired to around 1150deg C and glaze fired to 1050deg C. It was a fashion that did not last very long and soon it was largely forgotten. The term 'Creamware' was coined by the antique trade much later. My creamware used porcelain clay as the body instead of a white earthenware clay to enhance the brilliance of the glaze colour, and was bisque fired to 980deg C for the ease of thick glazing in order to get a mellow juiciness from the glaze. It was then glaze fired to Orton cone 01 to obtain a strength of body.

Porcelain

Even after 40 years of handling this strange material called clay it continues to amaze me. You only need your bare hands to form it. It responds to the touch of a feather or to the blow of a hammer accurately and proportionally, and remains thus unless any other force is applied. But all potters are aware of another force which is at work even before we start work, and of course during and afterwards. This force is the Earth's gravicty, and potters have fought against Earth's gravity for more than five thousand years. It has a bearing on my most recent work, which falls into two categories:

'Unfolding' series: These forms are collapsed on the wheel, then hung upside down to stretch them back as tehy dry. 'Folding' series: This could also be called 'slumping', like the glass-forming technique. Porcelain deforms quite a lot during the firing. Through the ages all manner of techniques have been employed to stop deforming.

Potters form clay when it is plastic. Clay is plastic when it is mixed with water but then becomes plastic again when heated in the kiln. Ceramic engineers call this quality pyro-plasticity. The 'folding' pieces use this pyro-plasticity for forming. The 'unfolding' pieces use hydro-plasticity. In both cases the Earth's gravity - the deforming force - acts to 'form'. I nudge the Earth's gravity a little to 'deform' clay just a bit further..

All images on this site (C) 2008 Takeshi Yasuda. All Rights Reserved.