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Platters of the heart

Traditional Japanese pottery depict the beauty of simplicity

by Leon Nigrosh

MINGEI: THE BARNES COLLECTION OF JAPANESE FOLK ART at the Mead Art Museum, Amherst College, Amherst, through September 1998.

In 1925, Dr. Soetsu Yanagi (1889-1961) coined the term mingei (a contraction of the phrase "art by and for the people") in reaction to what he saw as the negative effect industrialization was having on traditional Japanese art. Influenced by the 19th-century English Arts and Crafts movement and its founder, William Morris, Yanagi set out to preserve ancient craft ideals and regenerate centers of craft production. Using his personal collection of weavings and pottery, Yanagi established Japan's first national folk-art museum, the Mingei Kwan, in 1936, and also founded the Japanese Craft Society.

Potters Shoji Hamada (1894-1977) and Kanjiro Kawai (1890-1966) helped Yanagi foster a renewed pride in Japan's cultural and artistic heritage. The mingei group were not a reactionary movement like the Luddites of the early 1800s who rioted against mechanization and actually destroyed factory machines. This group of learned men wanted to practice what they preached. Hamada built a kiln and a cooperative studio in Mashiko, in the mid-1920s, which is still actively producing functional ceramics today.

The central philosophy behind mingei is steeped in the Zen Buddhist and Taoist concept of "Mu" -- a state of undifferentiated being, unattached to either positive or negative. It includes the precept that one should attempt to match the beauty that comes from hard work with the beauty in nature. And, unlike Western thought, there is no room for individualism. For Yanagi, the unknown craftsman was the ideal. British potter Bernard Leach (1887-1979) was attracted to this mode of thinking and joined forces with Hamada and Kawai during the late '20s.

Things were progressing rather smoothly, new folk-art cooperatives sprung up in several different prefectures, two additional craft museums opened, and the Japanese public was gaining a renewed pride and interest in its distinctive culture. But World War II brought all of this to a sudden halt.

Enter Lakenan Barnes, Amherst College alumnus and lawyer. After the war, Barnes was posted in Japan as a legal advisor during economic reconstruction. During his seven-year stay, he began to collect Asian art, often purchasing prints and pottery directly from the artists who were all active members of the reborn mingei movement. From his vast collection of more than 3000 objects, Barnes recently donated about 250 pieces to his alma mater. A selection from these works is currently on display in the Daniels Gallery at the Mead Art Museum.

To serve as an introduction, curator Jill Meridith has displayed a traditional woodturned and handpainted Kokeshi doll with its typical revolving head along with two tengu goblin masks and a pair of woven straw snowshoes. These are specific examples of work made by Yanagi's "unknown craftsmen." However, it is the variety of utilitarian pottery that takes center stage. Ranging from large tsubo pickle storage jars to a tiny, lidded kojo incense box, these works exude the un-selfconscious air required by the mingei philosophy. But it is this apparent nonchalance that points to the dichotomy faced by the mingei practitioners. In their attempt to attain "oneness" and anonymity, their work is often singularly outstanding.

It is easy to spot Kawai's eye for color and shape at work in a sensuously bulbous blue bottle. A square plate serves as a canvas for Sakuma Totaro's (1900-'76) well-known style of fluid glaze painting. Hamada's very thumbprint is a giveaway on two small and unassuming teacups. For many of the other works in this exhibit the attribution becomes much more dicey. Two small plates have the slip-trailed rabbit decoration that became a Leach signature. But on closer inspection, these pieces do not have the finesse of the master and were therefore probably done by a student in the studio.

Other objects are a curious mixture or fusion of Japanese and British design and decoration. An obviously European-styled pitcher with its pinched spout and large handle is decorated with gracefully curved finger trails while a typical Japanese side-handled teapot is done in checkerboard glaze. Because there are no signatures or other identifying marks, most of these works are attributed only to a kiln or a town.

By following the tenet of making things through the combination of hand and brain moved by the heart, these artists, both known and unknown, have attained their goal of producing simple objects that do the job they were designed to do, along with the added benefit of bringing pleasure to those that ultimately use them.

The Mead Art Museum is open Monday through Friday from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Call (413) 542-2335.