Hiroaki ōmori

Hand-cut diagonal grooves accent the subtly planed walls of Hiroaki ōmori’s signature “Bevel”-style pieces, exuding an air of rustic elegance. The pieces are made entirely by hand – clay is pulled and pinched until thin, leaving a unique pattern of indentations on every surface of ōmori’s pots and cups. The artist’s touch has indeed hardly been more visible.

The artist draws heavily on the style of Bizen-ware, refined across millennia in the Bizen region of Okayama Prefecture, in Western Japan. Practitioners do not rely on glaze to make their pieces shine; rather, each work develops a warm, natural patina during one to two weeks in a wood-fired kiln.

Yet while ōmori incorporates the Bizen tradition into the very core of his work, his pieces also contain a taste of the contemporary. Smatterings of other styles, including thin-pressed pottery reminiscent of that found in Kyoto, find their way into his pieces as well.

ōmori was born in 1969 in the heart of Bizen City. His father, Teruhiko ōmori, is the third-generation head of the Jindō Workshop, famed for the incredibly detailed figures of animals – dragons, in particular – it affixes to its top-class 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 the emperor. 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.

Thus Hiroaki ōmori began learning the family trade from his father at a young age, starting with the mixing of clay. His maternal grandfather – and second head of the shop – ōae Jindō also took the boy under his wing. The two would make animal figurines together, and when ōmori was in elementary school, his grandfather taught him how to use a pottery wheel. He quickly learned to make bowls and other simple objects, and claims that, even then, he had some idea that his future would be in ceramics.

ōmori helped his family work the kiln throughout middle and high school. After graduation, he headed to Kyoto Saga University of Arts, then a two-year junior college, to study ceramics. The school was one of the few in Japan at the time to teach pottery, and did it in the distinctive Kyoto style, teaching the area’s traditional Kyō-yaki techniques alongside universal glazing and firing methods.

ōmori’s experience during and after college would also eventually give rise to his experiments fusing the typical thin-walled Kyoto style of pottery with his native Bizen-ware. After graduation, he worked in the area for two years while continuing to study Kyō-yaki, before returning home to an apprenticeship under his father.

Kyō-yaki prizes an extreme care for regular, well-shaped form. But working under his father, ōmori learned to adopt a key tenet of the Bizen style: intentionally breaking down clean lines and deforming a well-shaped piece.

“Unlike the finicky and sensitive Kyō-yaki, Bizen-ware finds beauty in the meaningful destruction of form,” ōmori says. “That gives the pieces an immense impact and highlights the unique qualities of Bizen clay.”

After four more years of study, ōmori set out on his own, forming an independent workshop and submitting to pottery exhibitions. In 2006, his work was selected for the Japan Traditional Art Crafts Exhibition, sponsored by the Japan Kōgei Association – a mark that a new artist has truly arrived.

“The indispensible hallmarks of the Jindō workshop are finely detailed sculpture work and top-grade teaware,” ōmori says. “But even as I pay heed to those arts, I hope to blend in new styles and influences to create truly revolutionary works.”