Poetry in Pottery

N THE 1960S and ’70s, when the Japanese potter Kamoda Shoji had a new body of work ready for sale, buyers would stand on line for hours and even all night long if necessary, in order to acquire a piece or two. Kamoda’s death from of leukemia in 1983 at the age of 49 tragically cut off a career that had already made him one of Japan’s most prominent modern ceramicists, and his works have been zealously collected ever since. In fact, so avid are the Japanese for Kamoda that his ceramics have rarely been seen in the West, and they are almost