Toshiko Takaezu Works

Born in 1922, Toshiko Takaezu was a female Japanese-American ceramist born in Hawaii. Her closed pots and torpedolike cylinders, derived from natural forms, helped to elevate ceramics from the production of functional vessels to a Fine art. She became known for the squat balls she called moon pots. In her stoneware and porcelain works, some small enough to fit in the palm of one hand, others monoliths more than six feet tall, Ms. Takaezu blended the expressive bravura of painters like Jackson Pollock and Franz Kline with the calm, meditative quality of traditional Japanese pottery in forms suggestive of acorns, melons or tree trunks. Her work is in the collections of the Smithsonian American Art Museum; the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. She taught at the Cleveland Institute of Art for nearly a decade after returning from Japan and for 25 years at Princeton, where she helped to develop the visual art program. She retired from Princeton in 1992 to devote herself full time to her studio work. She passed away in 2011.