27 Facts About Toshiko Takaezu

Toshiko Takaezu was an American ceramic artist, painter, sculptor, and educator whose oeuvre spanned a wide range of mediums, including ceramics, weavings, bronzes, and paintings.

Toshiko Takaezu was noted for her pioneering work in ceramics and played an important role in the international revival of interest in the ceramic arts.

Toshiko Takaezu was of Japanese descent and from Pepeeko, Hawaii.

Toshiko Takaezu was born the middle child of eleven to Japanese immigrant parents in Pepeekeo, Hawaii, on 17 June 1922.

Toshiko Takaezu's parents had immigrated from the Japanese town of Gushikawa on the island of Okinawa.

Toshiko Takaezu's parents maintained a traditional Japanese lifestyle: shoes were removed upon entering the house, breakfast consisted of miso soup and rice, sleeping was on the floor.

Toshiko Takaezu did not learn to speak English until she entered first grade.

At the pottery guild, Toshiko Takaezu met Carl Massa, a New York sculptor who was with the Special Services Division of the US Army.

Eager to learn more about the lives and careers of artists, Toshiko Takaezu enrolled in Saturday painting classes at the Honolulu Museum of Art School studying with Louis Pohl and Ralston Crawford.

Toshiko Takaezu became an important influence in expanding her vision and helping her develop a strong technical foundation for her work.

In 1948, Toshiko Takaezu began teaching a ceramics class at the YWCA in Honolulu, where she discovered her deep love for teaching and inspiring students.

Toshiko Takaezu earned an award after her first year of study, which acknowledged her as an outstanding student in the clay department.

Toshiko Takaezu taught summer sessions at the Cleveland Institute of Art, where she became head of the ceramic department.

In Japan, Toshiko Takaezu was intent on understanding more fully the ceramic tradition of Japan that validated the medium as an art form.

Toshiko Takaezu's friendship with the weaver Lenore Tawney was a major influence on both their lives.

Toshiko Takaezu taught at several other universities and art schools: Cranbrook Academy of Art, Bloomfield Hills, Michigan; University of Wisconsin, Madison, Wisconsin; Honolulu Academy of Art, Honolulu, Hawaii.

Toshiko Takaezu retired in 1992 to become a studio artist, living and working in the Quakertown section of Franklin Township, Hunterdon County, New Jersey, about 30 miles northwest of Princeton.

Toshiko Takaezu treated life with a sense of wholeness and oneness with nature; everything she did was to improve and discover herself.

Toshiko Takaezu referred to the firing as something spiritual that adds an unpredictable element and outcome to each work.

Toshiko Takaezu was once asked by Chobyo Yara what the most important part of her ceramic pieces is.

Toshiko Takaezu replied that, it is the hollow space of air within, because it cannot be seen but is still part of the pot.

Toshiko Takaezu relates this to the idea that what's inside a person is the most important.

At times, Toshiko Takaezu exhibited the moon pots in hammocks, an allusion to her method of drying the pots in nets.

In 2003 a bronze bell cast, dated, and inscribed in 2000 by Toshiko Takaezu was erected in a memorial garden on the west side of Princeton University's East Pyne Hall.

Toshiko Takaezu was known to not date her work, often noting only the decade in which they were made, as a practice that intended that the pieces were experienced in terms of the artist's evolution rather than in a carefully laid out chronology.

Toshiko Takaezu died on March 9,2011, in Honolulu, following a stroke she suffered in May 2010.

Toshiko Takaezu has been in several group exhibitions throughout the United States and internationally in countries including Belgium, Czechoslovakia, Japan, and Switzerland.