Takushi Takahara is an artist who engages deeply with clay and fire.
Even among fellow practitioners, he is often described simply as a man who truly loves clay.
In his daily life, he seeks out nature—chasing the fish in the river, gazing at the sea and sky, tending charcoal fires. Each of these moments extends seamlessly into his practice, forming a continuous thread between living and making.
Within his forms, there lingers a vital presence—suggestive of mouths, of bodies, of organic undulations. His works seem to touch the threshold between the inert and the animate, where matter begins to breathe.
Takahara also finds value in pieces with no visible effect of kiln fire (yōhen). Within the absence of visible pattern, he perceives what cannot be seen. His gaze already resides beyond convention, and his way of confronting flame is equally singular.
He selects not only pine, but also thinned woods such as cypress, deliberately invoking flames that resist easy control. These fires are not subdued; they rise as if awaiting an encounter.
For Takahara, firing is an act of drawing forth the moment in which clay and flame meet. It is this encounter that he cherishes above all.
He does not merely look at clay—he lives alongside it.

As an artist within the lineage of the Isezaki family, he bears both the responsibility of inheriting tradition and that of giving rise to innovation.
Within this delicate balance, his forms emerge with a quiet strength—one that opens Bizen to the present without compromising its essential nature.
The refined clay passed down through the Isezaki lineage yields a clarity of texture and an inherent dignity. In engaging with this material, he repeatedly makes subtle and exacting decisions: whether to remove the stones from the raw clay, or to leave them intact.
Though contemporary in form, his work carries an irreplaceable sense of refinement.
This quality arises not from technique alone, but from his position within the lineage—and from the spirit with which he approaches it.

Hiroshi Toyofuku is an artist who engages directly with the state of the clay itself.
Born in Tokyo and now based in Bizen, his work has already been recognized by collectors in Europe. He is among the few artists to inherit the technique of shizen nerikomi (natural marbling), while deepening it into a distinctly personal practice.
Natural clay is, by its very nature, uneven and heterogeneous. Where much of ceramics seeks to refine and homogenize the material before giving it form, Toyofuku resists this impulse, choosing instead to preserve the clay’s inherent irregularities and work with it as it is.
He does not crush, mix, or knead. Instead, he gently cuts into water-laden clay and quietly stacks it. This act is less one of shaping than of guiding form while allowing the clay to remain in its original state.
From this painstaking process—one that demands immense time—only a small number of works emerge.
In a quiet studio surrounded by fields, he continues, with few words, to face the clay.
He does not seek to make clay into something else, but to let it remain as clay.
In his work, beyond the reach of human intention, the strata and time of the earth itself come to the surface.