Takeshi Yasuda: Working in China

Fifteen years ago, at an age when most people are considering retirement, the Japanese born, British potter, Takeshi Yasuda relocated his studio from England to China. It is remarkable, but consistent with this artist’s enquiring nature, that after over forty years of working with stoneware he should take on porcelain as well as the challenges faced by foreigners in modern China. In doing so he is producing some of the most exciting work of his career.

Yasuda’s work has always reflected a lifelong obsession with the soft sensuousness of wet plastic clay. The finished pieces always refer us back to the freshness of the initial forming with fluid rims and bases, plump generous volumes and shiny or slightly matt glazes that evoke the glistening watery beauty of a newly thrown pot. His porcelain work also embraces ‘pyroplasticity’ where the body softens as it develops the glassy phase that produces translucency. The waste heaps of China’s historic kilns testify to the potter’s often vain struggle to control this process and defy gravity. With the daring of the flying trapeze and the miraculous poise of a ballerina Yasuda’s forms go to the edge of collapse. This fascination may account for the relatively narrow range of forms he has developed during his time in China but equally it seems likely that China’s culinary traditions