Perfect Mashiko Chawan with salt glaze by Shoji Hamada

A perfect Mashiko chawan with stunning glaze by greatest Shoji Hamada, enclosed in its originally signed wood box. The bowl has a wonderful shiyo-yu salt glaze. Hamada made such treasures only once a year in April because items with such glaze were very difficult to made.

Hamada Shoji (1894 - 1978) was one of the founding fathers of the Studio Pottery movement, who came over to England with his friend, Bernard Leach, to start the Leach Pottery in St. Ives, Cornwall back in 1920. Like Leach, Hamada did not come from a pottery background but had studied ceramics briefly in Tokyo. Upon his return to Japan, Hamada set up a workshop amongst the rural potters of Mashiko and was based there until his death. In 1955 he was designated as a ‘Living National Treasure' for his involvement and promotion of folk art pottery and the Mingei philosophy.

It is said that the only pots from Hamada’s pottery that he threw and decorated entirely on his own were his teabowls and here we have one such example.

The bowl is well balanced and in mint condition.

Size: 9,2 cm height x 13,1 cm in diameter