Toshiko Takaezu
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.
[6] 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.
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.
[7] 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.
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 to 1949)[10] studying with Louis Pohl and Ralston Crawford.
[1][12][13] 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.
Responding to the texture of yarn and its rich color possibilities, she approached weaving as a different way of thinking and developing ideas.
[2] 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.
"[16] 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.
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.
[11] During that eight-month trip in Japan in 1955, Takaezu studied Zen Buddhism, tea ceremony,[9] and the techniques of traditional Japanese pottery, which influenced her work.
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.
[19] Through her travels in Japan, including residence in a Zen monastery, she strengthened her original cultural receptivity to the spirit of natural materials.
"[20] 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.
[10] She retired in 1992 to become a studio artist, living and working in the Quakertown section of Franklin Township, Hunterdon County, New Jersey, about 30 miles northwest of Princeton.
[20] Takaezu's early works from around the mid-1950s center upon semi-utilitarian teapots, plates, bottle shapes, and double-spouted vases in conventional sand and earth colors.
In the late 1950s, she began to develop rich blue, pink, and yellow glazes, colors she continued to employ throughout her career.
[25] Influenced by Japanese and Scandinavian designs, her early works are frequently brushed with calligraphic markings and stylized floral motifs.
[27] Then in the late 1950s, strongly influenced by the Finnish ceramist Maija Grotell, she embraced the notion of ceramic pieces as artworks meant to be seen rather than used.
[1] Takaezu's signature clay forms are carefully thrown on a wheel, built by joining coils or slabs, or shaped by hand modeling, and decorated by brushing, spraying, or dripping glazes onto the surface.
[29] Before closing her forms, and leaving only a pinhole to allow heated gas to escape during firing, she would insert a piece of clay wrapped in paper into the vessel’s interior.
"[30] Strongly influenced by her study of Zen Buddhism, she regarded her ceramic work as an outgrowth of nature and seamlessly interconnected with the rest of her life.
In 2003 a bronze bell cast, dated, and inscribed in 2000 by Takaezu was erected in a memorial garden on the west side of Princeton University's East Pyne Hall.
Takaezu was known to not date her work, often noting only the decade in which they were made, as a practice that ensured that the pieces are experienced in terms of the artist's evolution rather than in a carefully laid out chronology.
