Tray in a large rectangular form of stoneware with a copper-oxide green glaze ground over-splashed with cream-colored slip and iron-oxide brown. By Hamada Shoji (1894 – 1978). Showa era, circa 1955.

With the tomobako or original box, inscribed on the interior of the lid: Ao Yu Ryu-byo Kaku Moribachi or Blue Glazed Flowing (Design) Rectangular Dish for Leaves and Seasonal Fruit, and signed: Shoji, and sealed: Sho.

Born in Kawasaki in Kanagawa Prefecture, Hamada Shoji studied ceramics at Tokyo Industrial College. After graduation, he worked for a time at the Kyoto Ceramic Testing Institute. In 1920, he accompanied his friend Bernard Leach to England, where he helped construct The Leach Pottery in St. Ives, Cornwall. There, Shoji spent several years making ceramics before returning to Japan in 1924. At this point, he moved to the pottery center of Mashiko in Tochigi Prefecture and established a kiln. He became active in Yanagi Muneyoshi’s Mingei or Folk Art Movement, eventually becoming director of the Japan Folk Crafts Museum in Tokyo. In addition, Shoji worked several times in Aizu Wakamatsu and Okinawa. He traveled extensively in Korea and China, personally assembling a large collection of folk art (which now forms the collection of a private museum he named the Sankou-kan or Reference Collection). In recognition of his “folk craft ceramic,” Hamada Shoji was designated Juyo Mukei Bunkazai or Important Intangible Cultural Asset (commonly known as a Living National Treasure) in 1955. He was awarded the Order of Culture in 1968.

Though his technical training in ceramics was extremely broad, Shoji chose to work in a modernist folk craft idiom. He used only traditional Mashiko glazes, potting with local clay, and glazing with various types of ash, salt, under-glaze blue and over-glaze enamels. His work displays both sophistication and boldness.

For a similar piece by Hamada Shoji dated to 1955 in the collection of the University Art Museum at the Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music, c.f. Kogei – A View of a Century of Modern Japanese Crafts, page 191, number 217. The museum’s plate employs a more common reddish-brown glaze for the ground, over-splashed with white and blue.