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Tatsuzo Shimaoka: Mashiko Pottery and Cord Inlay
Updated: Oct 28
A square body meets a short, round neck. Across the pale sides, small red, green and yellow plant forms sit within rounded fields, surrounded by a fine diagonal pattern. Darker edges make the vessel's corners easy to follow. This handled vase, recorded as 象嵌赤絵草花文方壺 by Tatsuzo Shimaoka, is compelling because its ornament works at two scales: lively coloured accents and a quieter texture that continues between them.
That relationship leads into Shimaoka's place in Mashiko. The town's account of its pottery describes a centre that developed through everyday vessels such as bowls, water jars and teapots. Shoji Hamada moved there in 1924 and helped bring the concerns of the Mingei movement into local ceramic practice.
Everyday craft and an individual language
The Japan Folk Crafts Museum explains that Yanagi Soetsu, Hamada and Kawai Kanjiro coined the term Mingei in 1925 for the crafts of ordinary people, paying particular attention to the beauty of everyday objects made by unnamed makers. This history gives us a context for valuing the relationship between a vessel's form, material and decoration.
Shimaoka studied with Hamada. According to Mashiko Town, his own cord-impressed inlay developed through influences that included his father's work as a braid maker and Korean ceramics. He brought inherited interests together in a personal method, rather than treating local tradition as a fixed set of appearances.
In the general process known as jomon zogan, a braided cord is rolled across clay while it is still soft. Contrasting slip fills the impressions, and the surface is worked back to reveal the pattern. The movement of a flexible cord becomes a lasting geometric structure within the fired vessel. Shimaoka was recognised in 1996 as a holder of the Important Intangible Cultural Property for Mingei pottery using this technique.
Looking between the coloured motifs
On the square vase, the small plant forms can catch our attention first. Yet the surrounding pale field is far from empty. Closely repeated diagonal marks make a textured network around the rounded motif areas. The coloured shapes appear more distinct because this quieter pattern provides a continuous setting.
The corner offers a particularly rewarding place to look. Decoration on one face gives way to another, while the darker edge stresses the turn. Above, the circular neck changes the geometry again. The vase combines a clear, stable outline with many small variations that prevent the surface from feeling mechanical.
Jigusuri is another term encountered in Shimaoka's wider work. The Agency for Cultural Affairs describes it as a transparent glaze known in Mashiko as namijiro, noting that changes in its composition can also produce a more translucent, matt appearance. This is useful vocabulary for exploring his pottery; a photograph alone does not establish the recipe used on this vase.
The Ibaraki Ceramic Art Museum also notes Shimaoka's use of cord inlay alongside other decoration, including brushwork and iron painting. His wider achievement lay in the variety of relationships he could build between surface and form. In the handled vase, small bursts of colour, rounded motif fields and a close patterned ground keep that relationship alive.
Cover the coloured motifs with your hand while looking at the photograph, then reveal them again. How does the patterned ground change their presence?
Handled work, shown for reference. General technique descriptions and separate museum works do not establish this vase's date or exact glaze and firing process.
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