Ceramic craftsmen

Ceramic craftsmen depicts the specialized artisans who shaped, glazed, and fired the pottery and porcelain that had been central to Japanese material and aesthetic culture for centuries. Mori's renderings of traditional craftsmen and their workshops documented a dimension of Japanese life that was rapidly changing in the postwar industrial economy, and his ceramic craftsmen composition honored both the physical skill and the aesthetic judgment required to produce fine pottery. The workshop setting — wheel, kiln, the craftsman's hands working the clay — provided a subject of considerable visual interest and cultural documentary value.