Yoshinori Takemura　
竹村良訓

Yoshinori Takemura's atelier is located in Matsudo city, Chiba. The self-renovated atelier that used to be a part of a lumber factory has a warm feeling. In this warm space, you can find a blackboard on cork walls that is filled with a schedule and handmade wooden tables lined up. On the shelves, you can find various forms of colorful wares as if they were jolly and about to move. Yoshinori uses this place for his artwork, pottery classes opened for the locals, and repairs of old wares. Originally he likes things that are old, and he studied conservation and restoration at Tokyo University of the Arts. Through the works of restoring process, he realized that the true value is not its price or scarcity but how much you are attached to it.

That is because he has no fixed style and creates new shapes as he turns the wheel. He decides what color to apply to each product, and this is his extemporization style of creation. He sometimes reproduces the same color glaze from his collection of test pieces, but he sometimes blends to create a new shade. As a student, he liked math and science and says that the nature of researching tenaciously fits him well. Not reproducing the same product and deciding the color each time is a very inefficient way, he laughs.

Yoshinori’s art concept is simple, humorous, and non-categorized. “Simple” refers to how he only uses simple pottery methods. “Humorous” refers to the imperfect shape and human touch in the art pieces. Then, he intentionally avoids the usage of the wares, not categorizing, and he wishes the owner to enjoy the wares freely as his comprehension and inspiration. He expresses the process of applying the glaze as “putting on clothes” on white unglazed wares that each has its uniqueness. For him, each artwork has a unique personality and is the one and only. This is why he wishes the wares’uniqueness to be enjoyed in everyday life and freely without any fixed idea.