Introduction
Two very similar vessels can be seen in completely different ways.
Put one on a kitchen table, and we simply use it as a bowl. Put another on a white plinth, and suddenly people look at it as a work of art.
They may look almost the same. But depending on where they sit, the way we see them can change, and sometimes even the price.
One of the Japanese ceramic artists I met told me that, for a while, the pressure to be recognised in the international art world nearly broke him.
Ujiie-san: “I wrecked my health trying to make a name for myself as an artist.”
Today, through the stories of two ceramic artists, I want to think with you about the value of craft beyond price, and how we might carry it forward.
Hi, I’m Satomi Takayama. I’m a Japanese artist based between Japan and London. Through Japanese aesthetics, craftsmanship, and philosophy, I explore what we may be forgetting in modern life.
I’ve loved Japanese craft for as long as I can remember, and over the years I’ve travelled around Japan visiting ceramic artists, swordsmiths and many other makers. I also make paintings, and I studied art business in London. So the relationship between art and craft is something that’s been on my mind for a long time.
This time I went to Tajimi, a town in Japan known for ceramics. I was lucky enough to meet two young contemporary ceramic artists who exhibit internationally and have very different approaches to their work.
Kodai Ujiie: The Pressure to Be Recognised in the Art World
The first person I visited was the ceramic artist Ujiie-san. He shows his work internationally, in the UK, Switzerland, the US, and elsewhere.
His studio was filled with pieces that felt less like vessels and more like sculptures, with these energetic combinations of colour.
This rough, rugged texture is amazing, isn’t it. It comes from the glaze foaming inside the kiln, and on some pieces he adds colour on top using urushi, Japanese lacquer. He calls this quality “Biological Chaos Wabi”.
He told me that the forms themselves are actually quite traditional: tea bowls, large pots and other familiar Japanese vessel forms.
Ujiie-san: “Ever since I was a student I loved looking at traditional Japanese tea bowls and things like that. There’s a lot of respect for Japanese culture in what I do, but I also want to make work that holds its own as art, even abroad.”
Hearing this, he sounds like someone who’s moved forward without any hesitation. But before reaching this point, there was a period when things became extremely difficult for him, both mentally and physically.
A few years ago, around the time of a solo exhibition abroad, he became seriously unwell. His relationship with the gallery, the pressure of his career, lots of things piling up at once. After working for about an hour, he could no longer stay on his feet. That’s how serious it got.
Ujiie-san: “I thought, if this carries on, I’m going to get really ill, I’m going to die. Mentally. And my body was getting worse and worse too.”
He told me about that time very quietly.
One of the ideas that helped him recover was the Buddhist concept of kū, often translated as emptiness.
Ujiie-san: “It’s about letting go of all your own attachments, your ego, your individuality, letting go of wanting things. Accepting that the world is always shifting. At that point in my life, the idea of not holding on so tightly to my own attachments felt very gentle to me.”
And from there, his thinking slowly began to change.
Ujiie-san: “I decided to make what I want to make, regardless of how other people judge it.”
I think that period of illness was a big turning point for him. Once he stopped using other people’s judgement as his only measure, the act of making became enjoyable again.
When Craft Enters the Art World
So, when craft, here I mean especially Japanese craft, tries to move into the world of art, what kind of barriers does it actually run into? I’d like to think about that for a moment.
The international art world as we know it today, including its museums, galleries and art fairs, developed largely within the context of Western modernity.
This doesn’t mean art belongs only to the West. It just means the current rules for what we call art, and how we explain its value, were largely shaped there.
Especially from the twentieth century onwards, a work came to be judged not only by the skill involved in making it, but also by the questions it raises, why the artist chose a particular material or form, and the context surrounding it.
Takashi Murakami has repeatedly argued that, for Japanese art to be recognised within a Western-centred art market, artists first need to understand how that system works.
So when Japanese craft tries to enter that world, saying “it is beautiful” or “the technique is incredible” is not always enough to gain recognition. Not in every case, but you can get asked: what is this work asking, and what context does it connect to?
But, for example, for a maker who’s spent decades working with clay or lacquer, translating all of that into the language of contemporary art is not easy to do alone. The ability to make something good, and the ability to talk about it in the language of art, are two different things.
That is why, alongside the artists themselves, gallerists and others who help interpret and communicate the work can be so important. They understand how the contemporary art world works and can articulate what is already present in the work.
Akari Karugane: Beyond the Vessel
The next person I visited was the ceramic artist Karugane-san. She is another young ceramic artist whose work is attracting attention in Japan and elsewhere in Asia. Her work, and the way she makes it, is really different from Ujiie-san’s.
Soft forms, and pale colours that have a quiet, comforting quality. Somehow her own gentle presence seemed to come through in the work itself.
Listening to her, I began to feel that these colours may be connected to the landscape and atmosphere she sees around her every day in Japan.
Something I didn’t know either: one of her inspirations is a kind of Okinawan pottery called Panari ware.
Karugane-san: “There was a Panari ware exhibition around when I was a university student. I loved their forms, their presence, and the atmosphere they had. They were simple, but there was something very appealing about them. And they’d crush up shells and mix them in, and fire it like that.”
She was also interested in the natural changes and distortions that happen as the clay dries.
Karugane-san: “Big pieces really change shape. If it changes in an interesting way, I want to accept it and let it become part of the finished work.”
Listening to her, the line between craft and art gets harder and harder to see. A lot of what she’s made can be used as vessels. But what she’s aiming for isn’t simply to make easy-to-use tableware.
Karugane-san: “Like you were saying, craft as craft has its difficult side; the price range is just completely different. So when I began thinking about how the work could be positioned and valued differently, I started considering a move towards the art world. And around that time, I happened to start doing wall pieces, working with an architect. I do make vessels too, but the concept isn’t to make comfortable everyday tableware you use every single day. I want each piece to be strong as a form, and to make it as a work of art. And usable as well, maybe. With pots, too, I want to push a bit harder and raise the price range. And once you feel that, you can’t just keep lining them up in tableware shops and craft corners; you have to take a step further.”
Like Ujiie-san, Karugane-san is also trying to find new possibilities for her work, and I really admired that.
From here, I want to move beyond these two artists and think about craft more broadly.
Listening to the two of them, what I wanted us to think about together was this: why are so many makers now looking for different ways to present their work and reach new markets?
Why Craft May Matter More Now
One part of the background is that, in Japan, some forms of traditional craft are no longer as widely used or in demand as they once were. When you look at it that way, makers stepping outside the usual frame to find new ways of getting their work to people seems completely natural to me.
And one of those other paths is the world of art. But when you try to go there, you hit those differences in how the art world works that I touched on earlier, a different kind of wall.
Still, I believe the possibilities for craft in the years ahead are far greater than those barriers.
This isn’t the first time the value of craft has been questioned and reimagined.
Over a hundred years ago, when industrialisation transformed the way things were made, the Arts and Crafts movement began in Britain, and in Japan, Soetsu Yanagi and others started the mingei, the folk craft, movement. I won’t go into the mingei movement in detail today, but it recognised beauty in everyday objects made by anonymous craftspeople.
Movements that bring renewed attention to the value of craft have often emerged at moments when technology and methods of production were changing dramatically.
These days, advances in technology, including AI, allow so much to be made in a very short time. That is exactly why I feel that the knowledge accumulated in a place over time, and the techniques passed down through generations, may matter more than ever.
Traditional craft carries that history within it. And I think that accumulation of time and knowledge is a form of value that deserves to be recognised, even within the world of art. To me, that feels like one of the real questions of our time.
Tatsunobu Ito: The People Who Support Craft
I also spoke with Ito-san, who runs a gallery in Tajimi called Space Ohara, and who introduced me to both of these artists.
Tajimi has a school where you can study ceramics.
In galleries in larger cities, artists are often only taken on once they are fairly established. Ito-san, on the other hand, has followed their development since they were students, so his relationship with them begins at a much earlier stage.
Ito-san: “We’re business partners, yes, but before that, knowing them as people came first.”
I think having someone like that supporting you must be very reassuring for an artist.
What he said about Tajimi as a place stayed with me too. Japan’s ceramic regions often have their own distinct character, but Tajimi, by contrast, has developed by absorbing a wide range of techniques and forms of expression.
Across Japan, many craft regions have their own communities, with people who support the makers and environments where skills and knowledge can be shared. That, to me, is one of the real strengths of Japanese craft.
But I don’t think this is unique to Japan. Wherever you go, there’s craft that’s grown out of local materials, local life, and the connections between people. Knowing that background changes how you see the work in front of you. That is also one of the important roles played by gallerists and others who help interpret and communicate the work.
More Than One Way Forward
So, does craft have to become art in order to be valued?
I do think moving into the art world is one path, and I really support the artists who choose to go that way. But I don’t think it’s the only one. We’ve talked a lot about art already, so I want to talk a little about some of the other possibilities.
Let me break it down into three groups: the makers, the people who help bring the work to others, and the buyers.
Starting with the makers.
From what I’ve seen in Japan, craft that seems to be doing relatively well outside the art world tends to have a few things in common.
Of course, in the craft world, a high level of skill is the starting point. But rather than trying to do everything themselves, they often bring in strong designers from outside and use traditional techniques to create things that fit into how people live today, such as lamps, cushions and furniture.
I also feel that in Japan, there are more and more efforts to connect craft with tourism, giving people more opportunities to discover it and learn about it.
And there are also examples of collaborations with well-known brands, characters, and anime, which help the work reach people who may never have had much connection with craft before.
Some people may see that as too commercial. But if the bigger goal is to keep these traditional skills alive, I think these approaches are worth supporting.
That said, when I talk to makers, I often hear that there’s no one in the middle, no one connecting the maker with the designer, or with the market. So there are clearly other things that still need to be worked out.
Next, the people who help bring the work to others.
I feel that there are fewer people now who can really explain what makes traditional craft valuable or interesting.
When that voice gets weaker, the real value of the work, and even the ways it can be enjoyed, don’t come through clearly. And that means fewer people find their way to it.
That’s why I think it’s becoming even more important for the people sharing the work to speak directly with makers, for example, understand the background and the techniques, and help people see what makes it interesting.
And finally, the buyers.
When we look at the difference in price between the art market and the craft market, it’s easy to start using price as a measure of value. But just because something is priced lower doesn’t mean the time, the skill, and the maker’s feeling that went into it are actually proportional to the price.
I think we also need to train our own eyes. Whether it’s a work of art or a piece of craft, I think it matters that we’re willing to pay a price that reflects the skill and the background behind it.
And learning why a particular craft developed in a particular place, what history lies behind it, and how rare those skills are, that can be genuinely fascinating in itself.
I don’t have a clear answer myself, and I know I’m talking about ideals here.
But by having these conversations, by letting people know what’s interesting about craft, and how much time is layered up inside it, that might be one of the things I can actually do. And I really hope it spreads, even a little at a time.
And if I ever get to create a physical space, I’d love it to be a place where people can experience what craft really means today.
I’m hoping that within this community, it won’t just be me, but that together we might find some interesting way forward. So please leave your thoughts and ideas in the comments, and I’d love this to become a place where we can talk it through together about the future of crafts.
The details of all three people in today’s video are in the description, so do check them out.
I will keep meeting different makers and sharing what makes their work so interesting. If you subscribe, it really helps me keep making these videos and sharing these stories with more people.
I also write about the things I cannot fully explore in these videos over on Quiet Japan, so I would be very happy if you took a look there too. See you in the next video.
See you in the next video.
