Hamada Shoji (1884-1978)

Hamada Shōji was born in 1894 in present-day Kanagawa prefecture, and in 1924 moved to Mashiko to set up a ceramics workshop. Before Mashiko, he made ceramics and built an East Asian-style climbing kiln in St Ives, a port city at the southwest edge of England, with his friend, British ceramist Bernard Leach (1887–1979). Leach’s studio became a cornerstone of modern British ceramics history, and continues to exert a great influence on contemporary British potters. Upon returning to Japan, Hamada met the philosopher and scholar of religion Yanagi Sōetsu and the potter Kawai Kanjirō. The three are credited with coining the word Mingei (folk craft), a condensed form of the term minshūteki kōgei. This marked the beginning of the Mingei movement, which espoused appreciation of the beauty of common household objects made by anonymous craftspeople. Many individuals associated with the Mingei movement visited Hamada, and Mashiko ware became increasingly popular as interest in Mingei spread throughout Japan and internationally.