SHOJI KUDO MEMORIAL GALLERY

"Ceramics is form and color, an accepted artistic means for the expression of abstraction in design. Its form is abstract, and it is to be appreciated as pure form." These are the words of a handwritten note, the last that Shoji Kudo (1934–2019), a master of Tobe ware, left behind.

Born in Iwate, Kudo moved to Tobe in 1957 and lived a many-sided life: as a designer at the Baizan kiln, as a potter at his own Shunju kiln, and as a hands-on leader of the postwar craft movement allied with the Mingei (folk craft) movement. The karakusa arabesque pattern he created has since become the very face of Tobe ware.

The gallery was born of the strong wish of Tsuyoshi Nakamura, a former mayor of Tobe and a close friend of Kudo's, to pass Kudo's work on to future generations. When his new home was completed, he wanted to turn the ground floor of his former house and shop, in the Ominami district that once flourished as the center of Tobe, into a small memorial gallery, and his request reached us through an acquaintance.

At first, Mr. Nakamura hoped to display as many of the Kudo works he had gathered as possible. But to let visitors sense the subtle curves and forms, the colors and textures of pieces that usually register as just one vessel among many, it would be better to narrow the selection so that each piece could be met properly, one by one. He accepted this proposal, and the renovation was planned around that exhibition scheme. At the starting point was the image of a small, intimate space where visitors could come face to face with Kudo himself for a moment, sensing his breath and the movement of his brush as if he were still alive, and talk with him.

Between the entrance and the gallery room, we placed a pitch-black corridor. It is a kind of warp hole, where people coming in from the bright outdoors can pause, let their breathing and emotions settle, and then move on toward a one-to-one encounter with Kudo and his work. The walls are thickly coated in a rough, dark gray plaster. Large pieces are set here and there along them, and through openings cut behind them, the gallery room beyond can be glimpsed. At the far end, there is only a large portrait of Kudo painting a piece, along with his work, and not a single written word.

In the gallery room, thin 3.2-millimeter steel plates, finished in black baked enamel, are cantilevered from the walls so that only the forms of the white Tobe ware stand out. There are no glass cases and no labels; the works are deliberately left without any explanation at all. Tobe ware is pottery for everyday life, and we wanted visitors to appreciate it not only with their eyes but with their hands. Some especially precious pieces are not meant to be touched, but that, too, is conveyed intuitively through the arrangement rather than through glass or "Please do not touch" signs.

On the facade of the former shop, which faces the street, we added a louver of Japanese cedar. It lets natural light in while keeping the interior from being too visible from outside, preserving the flow of experience from entrance to corridor to gallery room.

We received the note quoted at the beginning only near the end of construction, at the final stage of arranging the exhibition. Its words, "to be appreciated as pure form," felt like a reminder that what we had been working toward was in keeping with Kudo's own thinking.

Opened in April 2023, the gallery is a modest, privately run space, and it is by no means a place that draws large crowds every day. Even so, Kudo moved freely, throughout his life, between eye and hand, geometry and brushstroke, abstraction and sketching from life, the local and the world. To have helped create, in the town of Tobe, a real place to remember his character and his work has been meaningful work for us, not least because it allowed us to come to know a master artist/practitioner like Shoji Kudo.