Teruhiko Omori

Teruhiko Omori is the third-generation head of the Jindō Workshop, famed for the detailed and carefully crafted dragon and animal figures featured on its teaware. The first head of the shop was named a Living Cultural Treasure by Okayama Prefecture, and boasted skills so well developed that his pieces were chosen as gifts presented to Emperor Hirohito. The workshop continues to be recognized as the birthplace of some of the best and most finely crafted carvings and figurines that Bizen ware has to offer. Ōmori’s dragon figures, in particular, are skillfully carved down to the smallest details, and are almost eerily realistic.

One of Japan’s best-known schools of pottery, Bizen ware originates in Okayama Prefecture’s Bizen region. Bizen ware pieces are distinguished from other styles primarily by the fact that they are unglazed. The pieces instead obtain their color during the firing process: they are fired for five to seven days in wood-powered kilns, which naturally lends them a distinctive and beautiful patina. When placed atop pieces with such lovely natural coloration, Ōmori’s dragons brim with vigor, and stand out in any room.

Ōmori creates his pieces without the use of a pottery wheel, and instead uses his fingertips to press and spread the walls of his teaware thin. This lends the pieces a unique pattern of depressions and ridges, which gives the works a sense of unaffected warmth. The inner walls of the pieces clearly retain the artist’s fingerprints even after they are fired, lending a vividly literal sense to the descriptor “handmade.”

Ōmori was born in 1940 in the Kozushuku district of Okayama City, Okayama Prefecture, into a farming family that produced grapes, rice, and other food crops. Because he was the second son of the family, he was under no obligation to continue running the family farm, and instead worked in the local city office.

Ōmori’s employment with the city was exceptionally well timed, occurring at the height of Japan’s period of high-speed economic growth. His salary rose by several tenths every year, and he lived prosperously. He explored his interest in motorcycles, buying numerous new bikes to ride around town, and he remembers the period as one of exhilarating, poetic freedom.

During the same period, representatives from several ceramics workshops in the famed Bizen region, a mere fifteen kilometers from his hometown, came to the city offices to sell their wares. Until that point, Ōmori had never taken any particular interest in pottery, having only dealt with the large earthen jugs his family used to water their fields or to remove the ashes from the fire used to heat their bathtub. During his dealings with the visitors from Bizen, however, Ōmori’s interest in ceramics grew, to the point where he once spent over a month’s salary on a top-quality sake vessel.

One of the visiting artisans was Ōae Jindō, the second head of the Jindō workshop. After getting to know Ōae, Ōmori managed to arrange a formal meeting with the artist’s daughter and, when Ōmori was 27, a marriage between the two was arranged, in a system that was at the time typical in Japan.

Although the couple lived in apartment near Ōmori’s workplace after their marriage, they relocated to the Ōae family home once their children were born. Ōmori continued to work for the city at first, but the longer he watched his father-in-law working on his pottery, the more entranced he became. He began to learn by imitation, and his interest in creating pottery only grew once he began to sell the pieces that he himself had made.

Ōae had no son, and therefore lacked an obvious successor. Ōmori stepped into this role at the age of 30, resigning from his position at the Okayama city offices and throwing himself into ceramics full-time. When his father-in-law passed on in 1982, Ōmori became the third head of the Jindō Workshop.

Ōmori’s specialty, his detailed dragon figures, however, was not something that his Ōae had taught him. Rather, it was only by remembering the way that Ōae had crafted the figures during life and studying the examples that he had left behind that Ōmori honed his skills. Though Ōmori creates figures of other animals as well, including the other 11 animals of the zodiac, he enjoys creating dragons the most precisely because they entail the most detailed craftsmanship, and has therefore mastered them to the highest degree.

Many of Ōmori’s pieces of high-end teaware display the randomly occurring discolorations characteristic of the rarest and most sought after Bizen ware pieces, which are caused by unique patterns of oxidation that only occur at very few points within the kiln.

In addition to his famed teapots, Ōmori also creates a variety of vases, incense holders, and figurines.