Masuda Emi

With rustic textures and calm, subdued coloration, Masuda Emi’s works are the essence of simplicity, overflowing a sense of calm grace. Her beautiful pieces lend to their surroundings an air of unsurpassed softness, and grant their user a mysterious sense of peace.

While most ceramics artists create their works on a potter’s wheel, Masuda works mainly by hand, in a modified coiling technique known as tebineri. In this technique, long, thin bands of clay are pulled, shaped, and combined exclusively by hand, resulting in a piece with soft lines and a sense of warmth, as compared to the smooth, cool texture of wheel-made pieces. Masuda uses the technique to create a variety of unique tableware, vases, and other items.

Masuda uses muted color schemes in her pieces, and many of her works are simplified even further, to a black-and-white palate. She uses a maximum of three colors in any given piece, but works to ensure the contrast between the colors she uses is not too strong, and that the various parts of her works blend well. For example, when she is adding a design in white to a piece with black clay as its base, the white she uses is less of a pure white than of a clouded grey, ensuring that the piece is harmonious overall. She refers to this as “a war between shades of black.”

Born in Nagano prefecture, Masuda has been drawing pictures since childhood, and majored in design at the technical college she attended. After graduation, she moved to Nagoya, the closest major city to her hometown, where she worked at a design agency specializing in publications.

Even in her design position, however, she felt unable to apply what she had studied at school, and gradually found within herself a desire to pursue her long-held interests in the art world. She began attending a pottery school, and, after 5 or 6 years of deskwork, decided that it was time for a break. She went to Seto, one of Japan’s foremost pottery towns, to attend a training school. At the time, she had no intention of making a living in ceramics, but as she continued her training, she began to think that pottery might be her calling in life. After graduating from her training school, she relocated to Tokoname City.

“Many of my pieces contain hints and patterns from plants and fruits,” says Masuda. For example, the basic shape of many of her pots and vases is based on that of a red poppy, and other design elements inspired by plants and trees can be found here and there throughout her work.

Combined with those elements, Masuda’s use of tebineri construction, as opposed to the potter’s wheel, adds a deep, unique warmth to her work.
“I like working by hand. Using a style based in tebineri lets me fully express the warm glow that human hands can create. Even when I go to exhibitions of other artists’ work, my eyes are drawn to hand-molded pieces,” she says with a smile.

“In the country, where I’m from, girls learn the art of flower arrangement from a young age, as part of a sort of ‘domestic training.’ What’s more, my family runs a flower shop, so plants and flowers are very close to my heart. That’s why I love making vases as much as I do.”

Given the success she has found, Masuda Emi surely has a long career ahead of her creating simple, warm, and deeply interesting works of art.