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Toshiko Takaezu
Toshiko Takaezu (June 17, 1922 – March 9, 2011) was an American ceramic artist, painter, sculptor, textile artist and educator whose body of work spanned a wide range of mediums, including ceramics, weavings, bronzes, and paintings. She was noted for her pioneering work in ceramics and played an important role in the international revival of interest in the ceramic arts. Takaezu is known for her rounded, closed ceramic forms which broke from traditions of clay as a medium for functional objects. Instead she explored clay's potential for aesthetic expression, taking on Abstract Expressionist concepts in a manner that places her work in the realm of postwar abstractionism. She was of Japanese descent and from Pepeʻekeo, Hawaii.
Takaezu is recognized as one of a number of ceramic artists in the 1950s and 1960s who were instrumental in moving the practice of ceramics beyond a commercial trade to become a form of artistic expression. A major retrospective of her work at the Museum of Fine Arts Boston in 2023, and a traveling retrospective organized by The Isamu Noguchi Foundation and Garden Museum to be launched at The Noguchi Museum in 2024 are reflective of the recent revival of interest in her practice and legacy.
Takaezu was born the middle child of eleven to Japanese immigrant parents in Pepeʻekeo, Hawaii, on 17 June 1922. Her parents had immigrated from the Japanese town of Gushikawa on the island of Okinawa. As a child, Takaezu helped her father and uncle farm watercress and raise honey bees. Coming from a family of few means, she left high school to support her family. Her parents maintained a traditional Japanese lifestyle: shoes were removed upon entering the house, breakfast consisted of miso soup and rice, sleeping was on the floor. Takaezu did not learn to speak English until she entered first grade. At the age of nine, her family moved to Maui, where her grade school—under the direction of a progressive principal—encouraged students to read and recite poetry and to draw. It was there that she received her first exposure to the arts.
After graduating from high school in 1940, she went to stay with her older sisters in Honolulu, where she worked at the Hawaii Potter's Guild creating identical pieces from press molds. The Hawaii Potter's Guild was a commercial pottery studio owned by the Gantt family. It was there, during World War II, that Takaezu first worked with clay, producing ashtrays and other functional items in press molds. While she hated creating hundreds of identical pieces, she appreciated that she could practice glazing. At the pottery guild, Takaezu met Carl Massa, a New York sculptor who was with the Special Services Division of the U.S. Army. Massa became an important inspiration for her, teaching and encouraging her to create sculpture and to read books such as Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead and Irving Stone’s Lust for Life, an interpretation of Van Gogh’s life story. Eager to learn more about the lives and careers of artists, Takaezu enrolled in Saturday painting classes at the Honolulu Museum of Art School (1947-1949) studying with Louis Pohl and Ralston Crawford. She then attended the University of Hawaiʻi (1948-1951) where she studied under Claude Horan beginning in 1947. Horan was impressed by her talent and energy, and pushed Takaezu to study on the mainland. He became an important influence in expanding her vision and helping her develop a strong technical foundation for her work. Although clay was her primary interest, Takaezu also took classes in design, art history, and weaving. In the textile program under the tutelage of Hester Robinson, she experimented with natural dyes and plant materials such as banana stocks. These early flat-weave experiments sparked an enduring interest in textiles.
In 1948, Takaezu began teaching a ceramics class at the YWCA in Honolulu, where she discovered her deep love for teaching and inspiring students. After the second year, she realized that becoming a fine art teacher required further study. Her instinct for self-motivation–fostered by growing up in a large family—told her it was time to leave Hawaii and travel to the mainland. From 1951 to 1954, she continued her studies at Cranbrook Academy of Art in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan (1951), where she studied sculpture with William McVey and weaving with Marianne Strengell, and met Finnish ceramist Maija Grotell, to whom she became an assistant in 1953. A pivotal influence and mentor on her development as an artist, Grotell was, in Takaezu’s view, "an unusual and rare human being who felt it was important for students to become individuals. It was through her criticism that I began to discover who I was." After becoming Grotell's assistant, Takaezu also began her teaching career. She instructed summer courses at the Cranbrook Academy from 1954 to 1956. She also taught art education courses at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in the Fall of 1954 and Spring of 1955. Although working in clay was her main interest, while studying with Marianne Strengell at Cranbrook, Takaezu became interested in the creative potential of fiber. Responding to the texture of yarn and its rich color possibilities, she approached weaving as a different way of thinking and developing ideas. Takaezu earned an award after her first year of study, which acknowledged her as an outstanding student in the clay department. She also taught summer sessions at the Cleveland Institute of Art (1955–64), where she became head of the ceramic department.
A grant from the Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation in 1964 allowed Takaezu to break from full-time teaching and take a studio in Clinton, New Jersey, where she took on apprentices throughout her career. In a 2003 oral history interview with the Archives of American Art she stated that the spot was ideal for her because it was "far away from New York City but not that far." In 1965 she left her teaching position to move to New Jersey, ultimately establishing a permanent studio and house in Quakertown in 1975, where she set to work designing and building an innovative kiln that would serve the growing scale of her ambitions for clay. Letters, drawings, and notes from the Takaezu papers at the Smithsonian's Archives of American Art, detail the process. Takaezu enlisted the help of Dick Hay from Indiana State University to build the 270-cubic-foot, two-chamber, cross-draft kiln of industrial grade refractory material, much of it donated. The kiln's capacious bisque and glaze firing chambers and its moveable roof allowed Takaezu to work at a scale rarely attempted. From 1967 to 1992 she taught at the Creative Art Program (later named Visual Arts Program) of Princeton University.
Seeking to understand more about her heritage, Takaezu planned a visit to Japan in the fall of 1955. In October, with her mother and sister Miriam as companions, she embarked upon a month-long journey to Okinawa Prefecture and other parts of Japan. At the month's end, the two sisters decided to extend their stay into the spring. During that eight-month trip in Japan in 1955, Takaezu studied Zen Buddhism, tea ceremony, and the techniques of traditional Japanese pottery, which influenced her work. In Japan, Takaezu was intent on understanding more fully the ceramic tradition of Japan that validated the medium as an art form. While studying there, she worked with Kaneshige Toyo and visited Shoji Hamada, both influential Japanese potters. Each gave her a warm reception, and she developed a special relationship with Kaneshige, who invited her to work in his studio for a few days. Years later, she returned the courtesy by inviting him to Cleveland to do a workshop while she was on the faculty there. Takaezu's observations and experiences during eight months of travel in Japan confirmed her roots in tradition and planted the seeds for a new philosophical base upon which she built her life as an artist and teacher. Through her travels in Japan, including residence in a Zen monastery, she strengthened her original cultural receptivity to the spirit of natural materials. To her, and in a Buddhist animistic fashion, she recounted, "Clay is a sentient being, alive, animate, and responsive," a material entity that "has much to say."
Takaezu's practice, especially following her time in Japan, has been lauded for its reach back to traditional forms and techniques, as well as to the social context of the Japanese mingei, or "arts of the people," movement. The mingei movement, which had developed during the 1920s and 1930s, honored the beauty in everyday and utilitarian objects made by unknown craftsmen. Takaezu and others, such as friend and fellow American artist Peter Voulkos (1924–2002), embraced this aesthetic sensibility and incorporated it into contemporary American ceramics. Takaezu's friendship with the weaver Lenore Tawney was a major influence on both their lives. At one time, they shared a studio at Toshiko's home in New Jersey and often traveled together.
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Toshiko Takaezu
Toshiko Takaezu (June 17, 1922 – March 9, 2011) was an American ceramic artist, painter, sculptor, textile artist and educator whose body of work spanned a wide range of mediums, including ceramics, weavings, bronzes, and paintings. She was noted for her pioneering work in ceramics and played an important role in the international revival of interest in the ceramic arts. Takaezu is known for her rounded, closed ceramic forms which broke from traditions of clay as a medium for functional objects. Instead she explored clay's potential for aesthetic expression, taking on Abstract Expressionist concepts in a manner that places her work in the realm of postwar abstractionism. She was of Japanese descent and from Pepeʻekeo, Hawaii.
Takaezu is recognized as one of a number of ceramic artists in the 1950s and 1960s who were instrumental in moving the practice of ceramics beyond a commercial trade to become a form of artistic expression. A major retrospective of her work at the Museum of Fine Arts Boston in 2023, and a traveling retrospective organized by The Isamu Noguchi Foundation and Garden Museum to be launched at The Noguchi Museum in 2024 are reflective of the recent revival of interest in her practice and legacy.
Takaezu was born the middle child of eleven to Japanese immigrant parents in Pepeʻekeo, Hawaii, on 17 June 1922. Her parents had immigrated from the Japanese town of Gushikawa on the island of Okinawa. As a child, Takaezu helped her father and uncle farm watercress and raise honey bees. Coming from a family of few means, she left high school to support her family. Her parents maintained a traditional Japanese lifestyle: shoes were removed upon entering the house, breakfast consisted of miso soup and rice, sleeping was on the floor. Takaezu did not learn to speak English until she entered first grade. At the age of nine, her family moved to Maui, where her grade school—under the direction of a progressive principal—encouraged students to read and recite poetry and to draw. It was there that she received her first exposure to the arts.
After graduating from high school in 1940, she went to stay with her older sisters in Honolulu, where she worked at the Hawaii Potter's Guild creating identical pieces from press molds. The Hawaii Potter's Guild was a commercial pottery studio owned by the Gantt family. It was there, during World War II, that Takaezu first worked with clay, producing ashtrays and other functional items in press molds. While she hated creating hundreds of identical pieces, she appreciated that she could practice glazing. At the pottery guild, Takaezu met Carl Massa, a New York sculptor who was with the Special Services Division of the U.S. Army. Massa became an important inspiration for her, teaching and encouraging her to create sculpture and to read books such as Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead and Irving Stone’s Lust for Life, an interpretation of Van Gogh’s life story. Eager to learn more about the lives and careers of artists, Takaezu enrolled in Saturday painting classes at the Honolulu Museum of Art School (1947-1949) studying with Louis Pohl and Ralston Crawford. She then attended the University of Hawaiʻi (1948-1951) where she studied under Claude Horan beginning in 1947. Horan was impressed by her talent and energy, and pushed Takaezu to study on the mainland. He became an important influence in expanding her vision and helping her develop a strong technical foundation for her work. Although clay was her primary interest, Takaezu also took classes in design, art history, and weaving. In the textile program under the tutelage of Hester Robinson, she experimented with natural dyes and plant materials such as banana stocks. These early flat-weave experiments sparked an enduring interest in textiles.
In 1948, Takaezu began teaching a ceramics class at the YWCA in Honolulu, where she discovered her deep love for teaching and inspiring students. After the second year, she realized that becoming a fine art teacher required further study. Her instinct for self-motivation–fostered by growing up in a large family—told her it was time to leave Hawaii and travel to the mainland. From 1951 to 1954, she continued her studies at Cranbrook Academy of Art in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan (1951), where she studied sculpture with William McVey and weaving with Marianne Strengell, and met Finnish ceramist Maija Grotell, to whom she became an assistant in 1953. A pivotal influence and mentor on her development as an artist, Grotell was, in Takaezu’s view, "an unusual and rare human being who felt it was important for students to become individuals. It was through her criticism that I began to discover who I was." After becoming Grotell's assistant, Takaezu also began her teaching career. She instructed summer courses at the Cranbrook Academy from 1954 to 1956. She also taught art education courses at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in the Fall of 1954 and Spring of 1955. Although working in clay was her main interest, while studying with Marianne Strengell at Cranbrook, Takaezu became interested in the creative potential of fiber. Responding to the texture of yarn and its rich color possibilities, she approached weaving as a different way of thinking and developing ideas. Takaezu earned an award after her first year of study, which acknowledged her as an outstanding student in the clay department. She also taught summer sessions at the Cleveland Institute of Art (1955–64), where she became head of the ceramic department.
A grant from the Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation in 1964 allowed Takaezu to break from full-time teaching and take a studio in Clinton, New Jersey, where she took on apprentices throughout her career. In a 2003 oral history interview with the Archives of American Art she stated that the spot was ideal for her because it was "far away from New York City but not that far." In 1965 she left her teaching position to move to New Jersey, ultimately establishing a permanent studio and house in Quakertown in 1975, where she set to work designing and building an innovative kiln that would serve the growing scale of her ambitions for clay. Letters, drawings, and notes from the Takaezu papers at the Smithsonian's Archives of American Art, detail the process. Takaezu enlisted the help of Dick Hay from Indiana State University to build the 270-cubic-foot, two-chamber, cross-draft kiln of industrial grade refractory material, much of it donated. The kiln's capacious bisque and glaze firing chambers and its moveable roof allowed Takaezu to work at a scale rarely attempted. From 1967 to 1992 she taught at the Creative Art Program (later named Visual Arts Program) of Princeton University.
Seeking to understand more about her heritage, Takaezu planned a visit to Japan in the fall of 1955. In October, with her mother and sister Miriam as companions, she embarked upon a month-long journey to Okinawa Prefecture and other parts of Japan. At the month's end, the two sisters decided to extend their stay into the spring. During that eight-month trip in Japan in 1955, Takaezu studied Zen Buddhism, tea ceremony, and the techniques of traditional Japanese pottery, which influenced her work. In Japan, Takaezu was intent on understanding more fully the ceramic tradition of Japan that validated the medium as an art form. While studying there, she worked with Kaneshige Toyo and visited Shoji Hamada, both influential Japanese potters. Each gave her a warm reception, and she developed a special relationship with Kaneshige, who invited her to work in his studio for a few days. Years later, she returned the courtesy by inviting him to Cleveland to do a workshop while she was on the faculty there. Takaezu's observations and experiences during eight months of travel in Japan confirmed her roots in tradition and planted the seeds for a new philosophical base upon which she built her life as an artist and teacher. Through her travels in Japan, including residence in a Zen monastery, she strengthened her original cultural receptivity to the spirit of natural materials. To her, and in a Buddhist animistic fashion, she recounted, "Clay is a sentient being, alive, animate, and responsive," a material entity that "has much to say."
Takaezu's practice, especially following her time in Japan, has been lauded for its reach back to traditional forms and techniques, as well as to the social context of the Japanese mingei, or "arts of the people," movement. The mingei movement, which had developed during the 1920s and 1930s, honored the beauty in everyday and utilitarian objects made by unknown craftsmen. Takaezu and others, such as friend and fellow American artist Peter Voulkos (1924–2002), embraced this aesthetic sensibility and incorporated it into contemporary American ceramics. Takaezu's friendship with the weaver Lenore Tawney was a major influence on both their lives. At one time, they shared a studio at Toshiko's home in New Jersey and often traveled together.