Raku: A Living Tradition traces an unbroken ceramic lineage across fifteen generations of the Raku family, documenting how production and firing methods unchanged in 450 years continue to shape one of Japan's most revered pottery traditions.
About This Book
Raku ware began with Chojiro during the Momoyama period in 16th-century Japan, and what makes this tradition extraordinary is not merely its age but its continuity. The same hands-on production and firing methods employed at the tradition's founding remain intact today. This newly revised edition moves through every generation of the Raku family in sequence, pairing photographs of works with editorial commentary that illuminates each maker's aesthetic sensibilities. For ceramicists, design historians, and students of Japanese craft, it functions as both a visual archive and a meditation on what it means to inherit and perpetuate a living practice across centuries.
Key Features
- 348 pages of generational ceramic documentation, with photographs and accompanying commentary spanning the 16th century to the present
- Edited by Raku Kichizaemon XVI and Raku Jikinyū
- Published by Seigensha
What You'll Discover
- How Chojiro established the founding aesthetic of Raku ware during Japan's Momoyama period and what distinguishes that sensibility from other Japanese ceramic traditions
- The specific production and firing methods that have remained unchanged for 450 years, and how they have been transmitted through successive generations
- The individual aesthetic character of each Raku generation, examined through their works and placed in historical sequence
- How a single family lineage has navigated the tension between preservation and contemporary practice, from the 16th century through to the 21st
About the Author
This volume is edited by Raku Kichizaemon XVI, the current head of the Raku family, and Raku Jikinyū. As direct inheritors of the tradition documented here, the editors bring an authority to this publication that no outside scholar could replicate.
Specifications
- Format: Softcover
- Pages: 348
- Dimensions: 17 x 26 cm
- Language: English
- ISBN: 9784861529900
- Publisher: Seigensha
- Publication Date: [Details available upon request]
Perfect For: Ceramicists, craft historians, students of Japanese design and material culture, and collectors of Raku ware seeking a definitive generational survey.