Tamba Pottery: The Timeless Art of a Japanese Village by Rhodes, Daniel - 1970

Tokyo: Kodansha International, 1970. Softcover. VG/G+ (book has very minimal shelf wear and age toning along textblock, previous owner's nameplate on front page - dust jacket has minor creasing at corners and spine). Red cloth with black embossed illustrations and silver embossed spine lettering; white and pictorial dust jacket with black and red lettering; 180 pp.; 139 bw figures. "Tamba - a remote and mountainous area lying to the northest of Kyoto and Oska - is the center of an ancient tradition of pottery that is still vigorous today. To Westerners, familiar with the elaborate enameled porcelains of Japan that have become famous throughout the world, the robust, unpretentious beauty of Tamba pottery presents a side of Japanese cermaics that has yet to be fully appreciated. The village of Tachikui is the last pottery village in Tamba. Here the craftsmen still maintain the unmistakable Tamba tradition; their skills reach back to the origins of Tamba pottery in japan's 'middle ages,' some even hundred years ago. This book not only presents the ware, techniques and life of this unique farming and pottery making community but also opens insights into Japanese ceramics as a whole. Perhaps most important of all, the story of Tamba ware reveals the character of pottery as a universal art and as a craft inseparable from the fundamental needs of man. The direct link it provides with the past is rare, even in Japan, and virtually nonexistant elsewhere. In this pottery village of Tachikui, the traditional craftsman has been allowed a brief respite from the hectic search for novelty and the preeminence of individualism in the modern world, and for this reason his work has serenity and an importance that makes it valued so highly in Japan and make it deserve wider recognition throughout the world." - dust jacket description.