Potter's yard

"Potter's yard" depicts a working pottery compound — most likely with kiln structures, racks of drying vessels, sheds, and the tile-roofed buildings that accompany traditional Japanese ceramic production. Hiratsuka had a documented interest in the regional crafts of Japan, and pottery towns such as Bizen, Mashiko, Tamba, and Karatsu offered subjects that combined the architectural geometry he favored with the rougher textures of stacked clay forms and woodfired kilns. The likely composition compresses these elements into a layered arrangement of black-and-white planes: kiln chimneys and roof ridges as silhouettes, drying ware as small repeated marks, the ground plane and walls as broad areas of unprinted [washi](/glossary/washi) or solid black ink. As a [sosaku-hanga](/glossary/sosaku-hanga) print, the sheet was entirely the work of Hiratsuka himself — drawing on the block, carving with knife and chisel, and pulling the impression on washi with a [baren](/glossary/baren). The piece sits within his broader project of recording the working life and material culture of twentieth-century Japan, treating a craft yard with the same compositional seriousness he gave to temple precincts and castle towns.