Toshiko Takaezu and Me

By
J. Stanley Yake, Ph.D.

I first met Toshiko Takaezu at Skidmore College's Ceramics Lab, where she had come to do a workshop during Prof. Regis Brodie's Summer Six Ceramics Program

During the next 25 or so years, I often visited her at her studio in Quakertown,

NJ, just around the corner from the Hunterdon Museum in Clinton, NJ, where

she has had a deep and abiding relationship all that time. She had moved there

to be close to Princeton University, where she would teach for 25 years and then 

be honored for her achievements with a Doctorate, given to her the same 

day Princeton honored President Clinton.

During this period, my wife Barbara and I also went many places to be with Toshiko Takaezu where she was either working or exhibiting. These included: Shigeraki, Japan where she was invited one summer to teach ceramics students from all over Japan, and Honolulu, Hawaii, where we spent a number of vacation days with her and her family, including a couple of days on Kawai with her brother and his wife.

These also included the following places where she had a major exhibition or workshop:

The Contemporary Museum of Hawaii, Honolulu
The Allentown Art Museum, Allentown, PA
Dickinson College, Carlyle, PA
Montclair Museum, Montclair, NJ
LongHouse Reserve Museum, East Hampton, NY
The American Crafts Museum of New York (Now, The Museum of Art and Designs)
The Museum of Art of The University at Albany, Albany, NY
The Hunterdon Museum, Clinton, NJ
Goshen College, Goshen, IN
Perimeter Gallery, Chicago, IL
The Racine Art Museum, Racine, WI
The Ohr-O'Keefe Museum, Biloxi, MI
The Charles Cowles Gallery, NY, NY
The Gallery at Bristol-Myers Squibb, Princeton, NJ 
The Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, PA
Manatee Commmunity College, Bradenton, FL

During that period I also helped her with her project at Peters Valley Crafts 

Center in the Northwestern corner of New Jersey, where she was working to 

establish a ceramics program (with the support of her friend Peter Voulkos, 

 among others) that would include a Japanese style climbing kiln. But the 

politics of the oversight of Peters Valley were so onerous that we all resigned

from the Board en masse, and I think the climbing kiln never in fact got built.

During this period, I also often visited her in her home and stayed overnight, 

either on the cot in the dining room/living room, or in the upstairs bedroom. In 

either case, I was sleeping among the pots and object d'arts. In the former case, 

they included cast bronze balls under the dining room table and a Voulkos 

hanging platter; in the latter case, corners of rooms full of ?"seconds"?, stacked 

plates, and other multiple, diverse forms from various of her periods, kept up 

there for storage and for whatever other reasons.

We often had dinner together, usually out. But she cooked marvelously, and 

often insisted on doing lunch for me and whomever else was around. She cared

a great deal about her cooking, and took great pains to get it done just right, in 

later years, often with the help of her apprentices, whom she would co-opt and 

engage for both cooking and gardening duties in addition to their clay and kiln 

work in the basement studio. Tea, of course, was always served, with 

graciousness and quiet style. We could choose our own cups from her large 

collection along the kitchen wall.

The Tea Ceremony, with its quieting and meaningful ritual had always seemed 

to be a major part of her being, but at some point during this period, the Tea 

Ceremony seemed to take on special significance for Toshiko Takaezu, in that she was very interested in the projects and on-going work of the Tea Masters in New York City. Tea bowls were not just central to the table, but were a central part of her
workshops, in that she would always throw tea bowls (or glaze them) before 

working on her other, usually larger, clay forms of choice. She was also then a 

major inspiration and motivation for the Tea Ceremony project that the 

Skidmore Ceramics Program sponsored for its art students and the broader 

Skidmore Community of Saratoga Springs, NY.

But Toshiko Takaezu's art world was much larger than that linked solely to the tea ceremony ritual of her Japanese roots. She was a good friend of Isamu Noguchi (and his sister), with whom she was on close personal terms. When I interviewed her at 

Goshen College for its weekly, Goshen community-wide convocation (in the 

middle of her workshop there), I used Noguchi's value system and aesthetic as a 

primary reference point for understanding Toshiko Takaezu and her work as an artist. While her responses were not very direct, her conversational ploys pretty much tacitly acknowledged the validity of my attempt at this accounting. I also think that 

Noguchi's worldview and his aesthetic were influential on her attitude toward 

her work and its possibilities in the natural environment.

Her acceptance by the National Museum of Modern Art of Kyoto Japan for a major exhibition of her work affirms her broad-based affinity and consonance with the long held appreciation in Japanese culture of the fundamental link between clay art, the natural, the serene and the beautiful. Obviously her appointment as a teacher at Japan's primary ceramics center (Shigeraki), also shows the strength of her intrinsic ties to those Japanese aesthetic values.

The intensity and strength of her work ethic meant that she could never get done what she wanted to do, solely by herself! As with Picasso, she has been incredibly prolific and creatively active virtually 24/7 over more than 5 decades. And as with Picasso, marvelously productive in various artistic domains: ceramics, weaving, cast bronze and even some painting. This could only be accomplished with strong and marvelous support systems, including apprentices.

During this period of my familiarity with her, those apprentices were mostly

graduates of Skidmore College's Ceramics Program under the aegis of Prof. 

Regis Brodie, and they are now productive ceramics artists in their own right. 

That apprentice role, in significant fashion, let these young assistants be 

mentored by Toshiko Takaezu, and that mentoring surely compensated for the enormously hard and diligent work they were required to do.
 
When she visited us in the Capitol District of New York (Albany), she was 

always friendly, generous, gracious, good spirited and often funny, but always 

on a sort time-line: there was always work to do that she needed to do, projects

that needed to be finished, people to be seen that she had arranged for to come 

visit her. My impression has been that the only time this regimen was more 

relaxed was when she went to Honolulu, Hawaii to her house, there, for a 

couple of months in the winter time. She seemed to take it easier then and there; 

she would write friendly notes, and give every impression that she was taking it 

easier than when she was stateside. Of course, her sisters were also there in 

Honolulu for her, and her apprentices would still be on duty and on call to 

cover the artist's exigencies in and around her studio in Quakertown, NJ. 

During some lovely balmy nights in the summer, we did go together to the NYC 

Ballet at the Saratoga Performing Arts Center, which we all enjoyed immensely. 

But Toshiko's first love, I think, was always gambling on the horses at Saratoga's 

Flat Track, and in the midst of her workshops at Skidmore, we could sneak

away for a couple of races to try our luck. But as luck would have it—-well, you 

know!

The numerous appreciative reviews of her exhibits and work seemed largely 

commensurate with her incredible creative productivity. She had also been given numerous awards, including the first New Jersey Governor's Award and the New Jersey Pride Award, but not a single book had been published about her and her work.

I had taken a lot of pictures, and at some point a couple of years ago I suggested 

to her that I put together a photography book, using not only my photos, but if 

possible, appropriate pictures from the catalogs of her exhibitions. She agreed, 

and by January, 2006 we had a celebratory grand opening of my book: Toshiko
Takaezu: The Earth in Bloom, at The Contemporary Museum of Honolulu, in 

conjunction with a major sale there of her work, largely on behalf of the 

Museum. We signed books, partied, and in 2 days the Museum sold more than

$200,000. worth of her pots. It was a gloriously successful Opening and 

Celebration! No wonder she had been designated a "Living Treasure" (in 

Hawaii) and given the "Human Treasure Award" (University of North 

Carolina)!

The poem, "Black Bowl Dreaming" by Leila Philip, is a centerpiece in my book, 

as a result of her having been a student of Toshiko's at Princeton, and a writer 

who spent time in Japan. Because of that, Leila Philip was also persuaded to do 

a serious memoir of Toshiko Takaezu, that should be published before too long. 

With some luck, our two books will be complementary. 

Meanwhile, we would do well to stop the world for a bit and contemplate the 

wonderful life and work of this great artist, perhaps through this book, or 

perhaps through examining one of her contributions to many of our great 

museums, including those mentioned already, as well as the following:

The Japanese American National Museum of Los Angeles, CA 
The Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.
The Cleveland Institute of Art, Cleveland, OH
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY, NY
The Milwaukee Museum of Art
The Johnson Wax Collection, Racine, WI
The Honolulu Academy of Art, Honolulu, HI
The Everson Museum, Syracuse, NY
Cranbrook Academy of Art, Bloomfield Hills, MI
Boston Fine Arts Museum, Boston, MA
The Detroit Institute of Art, Detroit, MI
St. Paul Gallery, St. Paul, MN
Newark Museum of Art, Newark, NJ
Toledo Museum of Art, Toledo, OH