Tatsuzo Shimaoka was born in 1919 in Tokyo. He studied ceramics at Tokyo Institute of Technology before apprenticing with Shoji Hamada in Mashiko, where he continued to live until his death in 2007.

Shimaoka was appointed a ‘Living National Treasure’ in 1996, an accolade created by the Japanese government in order to preserve Japan’s arts and crafts traditions. Shimaoka’s exquisite wood-fired pots are decorated with rope-pattern surfaces inspired by both his braid-maker father and a long tradition of Japanese ceramics. Shimaoka’s pots are “highly acclaimed in Japan and around the world for enhancing both the artistic quality of mingei ceramics and their value as craft”*.

* Masano Sasaki, Agency for Cultural Affairs, Japan Asia Pacific Perspectives, February 2005

Above: Tatsuzo Shimaoka, 2005