Yasuhara Kimei 安原喜明 1906-1980

Dai Ichi Arts is delighted to announce the acquisition of Yasuhara Kimei's "Sekki" flower vase by the permanent collections of the Princeton Museum of Art. Yasuhara Kimei (also known as Yasuhara Yoshiaki) emerged as an extraordinary talent in the realm of artistry, particularly within the domain of ceramics. His creations not only encapsulated but also transcended the profound artistic and socio-political transformations of his era in Japan. While his influence on the ceramics culture in the Japan is held in the highest esteem, his work remains under-appreciated in the west until now. We are delighted that his work will be shown in the Princeton Museum of Art, which is an institution that boasts a diverse audience from academia to connoisseurs of Japanese ceramics, offering viewers a chance to delve into the modern history of Japanese flower vessels.

Currently, when it comes to making pottery, it appears that there are roughly three fundamental attitudes toward creativity. So, for the benefit of those who...

As the curtains close on our current exhibition, 'Object: Vessel of Yasuhara Kimei,' we extend our heartfelt gratitude to all of you for your unwavering...

Yasuhara Kimei's ceramics featured figurative, geometric, and abstract carved designs that were heavily influenced by the avant-garde essence of the famous Catalan artist Joan Miró. Pictured here are Yasuhara's preliminary sketches: a captivating glimpse into his creative process for his Gray-Blue sekki series from the 1930’s onward. One of these sketches graced the cover of Muneo Nakai's book on Japanese painting. These sketches converged on the surfaces of his ceramics, meticulously etched and filled with white slip.

Read the full essay on the work of Yasuhara Yoshiaki (Yasuhara Kimei) in the context of the development of avant-garde ceramics in Japan, by curator Russell Kelty (Art Gallery of South Australia). In 1993, the Meguro Art Museum in Tokyo held a retrospective for the ceramicist Yasuhara Kimei, today also known as Yasuhara Yoshikai. The exhibition, “Poet of the soil: Ancient verse, modern form”, presented the extraordinary artistic journey of one of the most significant ceramicists of the twentieth century. As its accompanying exhibition catalogue made clear, Yasuhara Kimei was a prodigious talent, an artist whose ceramics embodied and transcended the dramatic artistic and social-political shifts in Japan during his lifetime. In the Kanto region and beyond, his contributions to the ceramics culture are held in the highest regard and yet he remains largely unappreciated in the English-speaking world. Today, Yasuhara is most readily recognised for his high-fired vases, which are matte grey-black in colour and featuring intricate, inscribed designs filled with white slip. To create these works, Yasuhara used a combination of red Seto and Shigaraki clays, which when mixed with ground feldspar, iron oxide and cobalt, produce a distinctive dark surface. Yasuhara utilized a diversity of tools to create his unique designs including, bamboo spatulas, nails, saws and stamps. The techniques applied to create these vessels and the artistic vocabulary displayed on many of the works shown in this catalogue and exhibition are emblematic of the myriad influences on early twentieth-century Japanese ceramicists, who strived to define themselves as individual artists and ceramics as a path for personal expression. Like his contemporaries, Yasuhara was inspired by the technical virtuosity and unique surface decoration of historical ceramics created in China and Korea, as well as contemporaneous European artists.

Yasuhara Yoshiaki (known in the west as Kimei), was born in Tokyo in 1906. His father was a sailor on a foreign route. In 1924, at his father's urging, he studied pottery making techniques under Miyagawa Kozan II (1842-1916) in Yokohama, and around 1927, he studied under Itaya Hazan (1872 – 1963), learning how to be an individual ceramic artist. One of Yasuhara Kimei's best-known series is what he called "Sekki 炻器 (Stoneware)”. Molded in grayish-blue clay mixed with pigments, the surface is carved with a unique pattern, then filled in that carved line with white clay and fired at high temperatures. The vessels look modern and solid, but at the same time, they have a dignified and stately atmosphere, as if they were excavated from some archaeological site.