The Moon Jar “The life of...”

Finding beauty in ordinary, everyday life, London-based Japanese ceramist Akiko Hirai, creates decorative, domestic forms. A prolific teacher, tutor, and patron of new makers in Ceramics, she is a fellow member of the United Kingdom’s Craft Potters Association. Her pieces are exhibited in the UK’s Fitzwilliam Museum and Germany’s Westerwald Ceramic Museum.
Inspired by the antique porcelain Moon jars produced during Korea’s five-century-long Joseon dynasty, this energised, expressive interpretation is a textured testament to Hirai’s musings on human life. Effected by an almost intuitive firing process, Hirai contorts the pure form into a more contemporary, personalised piece of blemished porcelain. Aged imperfections and deliberate impurities accumulate on the vessel’s surface much like the emotional marks and scars born from a lifetime of impactful experiences.