Mizuno Yokei

Known for their overall lightness, their short and narrow spouts, and their small handles, Mizuno Yokei’s teapots exude a refined and subtle beauty. “Making an easy-to-use teapot is important, of course, but the pots also need to be interesting to look at – they need to stand up to appreciation as works of art. I pay particular attention to the overall balance of my pieces,” he says.

Yokei is also known as a master of the Nanban style, in which cracks and fissures in the pot’s outer surface give it a rough texture and unique visual appeal. While normal pots have both their inner and outer surfaces smoothed and shaped by hand on the potter’s wheel, Nanban-style pots are shaped from the inside only. The potter places his hands on the inside of the pot and pushes outward, filling out and rounding the shape of the piece. The outward pressure creates a unique pattern of fissures in the pot’s outer wall, which, because the surface remains untouched by the artist’s hand, remain in the finished piece.

Yokei uses a specially designed blend of clay in his Nanban pieces, perfectly designed to suit the unique style of the pots. Because creating such pieces requires a combination of refined technical skill, long experience, and intense effort, the number of artists who actually go through the trouble of creating Nanban-style works is vanishingly small, even in the famed pottery town of Tokoname.

Even Yokei had to struggle to master the style. After trying and failing in his youth to create Nanban-style teapots, he spent years amassing the technical skills required. It wasn’t until years later, after he had built up an impressive amount of experience, that Yokei finally succeeded.“It takes three times longer to make a Nanban pot than it does to make a normal one. The rate of failure is fairly high, and even the pieces that come out right take quite a bit of effort – nobody else wants to try it!” he laughs.

Born in 1956 in Tokoname city, Yokei has been part of the ceramics world for his entire life: his father was also a teapot artisan, and Yokei began assisting in the family business when he was in elementary school. He would polish his father’s finished pieces, or fill in the carvings on the teapots in charcoal to highlight the detailed designs. Though, initially, Yokei had no particular desire to make ceramics his life’s work, his long acquaintance with pottery – and his father’s influence – led him to attend a technical ceramics high school in Seto, Aichi prefecture. It was in high school, Yokei says, after he began to study glazes and obtain a deeper knowledge of pottery that he at last came to understand the field’s appeal.
Although Yokei and his father worked together during the twenty years from Yokei’s graduation to his father’s death, Yokei was often told by his father, whose works were fairly standard, to “make better pots than me!”

When Yokei’s elegantly shaped teapots are lent the characteristic texture of Nanban-style pieces, the pieces become all the more beautiful. Perhaps the aura of Yokei’s work and his sense of beauty come from his long love for classical music, which is constantly flowing in his workshop. He is currently working his way through Chopin’s nocturnes – only time will reveal how the music might work its way into his art. One thing, however, is certain: that Yokei’s constant quest for “beauty” will continue to give rise to ever more elegant and refined teapots.