CHRONOLOGY

BY JEFFERY SPAHN 

1922

Born June 17th in Pepeekeo, Hawaii, to mother Kama Taba and father Shinsa Takaezu, Toshiko is the sixth child born in a family of eleven brothers and sisters. 

1931

Attends elementary and high school in Maui. 

1940

Her first exposure to ceramics is at age 18. Moves to live with sisters in Honolulu; there she accepted a housekeeping position with Hugh and Lita Gantt, founders of the Hawaii Potter’s Guild. 

1941

Attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. People and families of Japanese descent living in the U.S. and Hawaii are subjected to severe discrimination and censoring during the war with Japan. It was a difficult and private time period for all. The Takaezu family was not interned.

1943

Takaezu’s older brother Bill joined the famous 442nd Infantry Regiment, which was composed mostly of Japanese Americans, and was wounded. 

1944

Receives sculpture lessons from Lieutenant Carl Massa at the Hawaii Potter’s Guild. They attended art events, plays, and musical performances together. The artist credits Massa as her first teacher and lifelong mentor in the arts. 

1945–47

Works at a ceramic production facility in a woodworking mill; there she meets Claude Horan, her first ceramics teacher. Horan was a well-known studio potter and sculptor who taught at the University of Hawaii from 1947 to 1978. Among his noted students are Toshiko Takaezu, Henry Takemoto, and Harue Oyama McVay. The aspiring artist assists with molded production ware and learns glaze chemistry, eventually designing a candlestick with floral decorations that was later produced by the factory (1). 

1947–1950

Becomes restless during the postwar years and reads books such as Disputed Passage by Lloyd C. Douglas, an American minister and popular author of spiritual fiction. The book’s theme of overcoming hardships when people are impeding your growth resonates with the young artist. She was later exposed to writing of Otagaki Rengetsu, also known as Rengetsu-ni, a Buddhist nun, who is considered one of the greatest Japanese poets of the nineteenth century. A skilled painter, potter, and calligrapher, Rengetsu was known for her sad poems and handbuilt teapots decorated with poetic calligraphy (2). One of Takaezu’s regrets is not purchasing one of Rengetsu’s teapots when the opportunity arose during a visit to Japan. Later in her career, the artist often included her own poems in her closed form ceramics, hiding the words within the dark interior. 

1947–1949

Takaezu enrolls in Saturday drawing classes at Honolulu Art School and studies with Louis Pohl and Ralston Crawford. 

1947

Her first one-person show is at the Honolulu Library in September; the exhibition fills the main hallway. 

1948–1951

Takaezu attends the University of Hawaii, studying ceramics with Claude Horan, design with Bert Carpenter, best known for his still lifes and floral realism, and weaving with Hester Robinson, organizer of the university’s first weaving classes (3). 

1949

Exhibits for the first time at Ceramic Nationals at the Everson Museum of Art in Syracuse, New York, one of the most important exhibitions in the United States. She would later submit entries from 1952 to 1968, a significant accomplishment for any ceramicist. The idea for making her signature closed-form ceramics, based on similar bottle forms with barely perceptible neck and openings, starts to germinate. Horan and others who had been trained in the ceramics method developed at New York State College of Ceramics at Alfred University were also making similar bottle forms, but eventually Takaezu would take the form one step further. 

1949–51

Starts teaching evening adult classes at the YWCA in Honolulu. She also teaches part-time at Manoa Elementary School during the day. 

1951–54

Leaves Hawaii for the first time to attend Cranbrook Academy of Art in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan. She majors in ceramics and weaving, her two passions. Her professors include ceramicist Maija Grotell, sculptor William (“Bill”) McVey and weaver Marianne Strengell. A Finnish immigrant, Grotell was a master potter who had studied ceramics at the New York State College of Ceramics under founding director Charles Fergus Binns. She became the head of the ceramics department at Cranbrook and is considered one of Takaezu’s greatest teachers. Takaezu said, “Maija could read my mind, she knew me well.” The artist credits Grotell for encouraging her to find her own voice (4). 

A prominent teacher and sculptor, Bill McVey was a participant in the W.P.A. arts program and responsible for many public statutes including works at the Jewish Community Center in Cleveland and the National Cathedral. He married potter Leza McVey, who is well known for her whimsical and modernist animal and altered bottle forms.  

A teacher at Cranbrook from 1937 to 1961, Marianne Strengell was a Finnish weaver whose work was inspired by natural forms. She also designed for companies influential in the development of mid-century modern including Knoll furniture. Although long associated with ceramics, Takaezu maintains a passion and commitment to weaving.  

Cranbrook was a rich environment for the artist’s growth; fellow students included Anna Kang Burgess and Ernestine Murai among others. She was also surrounded by many talented faculty members, including Harry Bertoia, a sculptor and furniture designer who also created sound sculptures. These early influences undoubtedly affected the artist’s own choices to alter bottles and include sound elements in her closed forms. 

1952

Takaezu receives the best clay student award at Cranbrook. Going to Grotell to acknowledge her teacher’s role in her nomination, she said, “Thank you.” Grotell replied, “Don’t thank me, thank God.” The artist also receives a McInerny Foundation Grant. She fulfills its provision for teaching in Hawaii in 1958. 

1953

In the great tradition of master and apprentice, she becomes an assistant to her mentor Grotell. Through her connections at Cranbrook, she was able to meet Sho- ji Hamada, Bernard Leach, and So-etsu Yanagi on their first American tour. 

1954

Receives the Lillian Haas Prize at the Michigan Artist Craftsmen Show, where she shows her newly developed form: the double or multi-spouted bottle (5). As one of the most talented of the students, she is offered the opportunity to teach summer sessions. 

1954-55

Teaches in the Art Department at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, as sabbatical replacement for Harvey Littleton, an early ceramicist who later shifted to glass and became a pioneer in the studio glass movement. After his return, Takaezu is invited to teach design for the following semester (6).  

From 1955 to 1964, she teaches at the Cleveland Institute of Art (7). Cleveland is a focus of ceramic design with such notables as Viktor Schreckengost and Claude Conover. Schreckengost, famous for his “Jazz Bowls”, is perhaps the most well-known potter at the important Cowan Pottery Studios. Conover is known for large coil-built bottle forms with intricate textural designs; his ceramics become icons of midcentury modern design.  

Several of Takaezu’s students travel to New York and visit with the painter-potter Henry Varnum Poor (8); in later years, Takaezu and Poor develop a long and close friendship. Takaezu also has the opportunity to engage with visiting artists such as Toyo Kaneshige, a Japanese National Living Treasure, who gives a pottery workshop. Takaezu creates a number of weavings during this period; her initial interest is sparked by a family member who was a textile designer. Working in clay during the day, she would spend evenings at the loom. 

Invited by Aileen Osborn Webb, founder of the American Craft Council, to have one-person show at Bonnier’s in New York City (9). This is an important venue for other craft artists and ceramicists, including Sho- ji Hamada, Gertrud and Otto Natzler, Peter Voulkos, and Marguerite Wildenhain. 

1955-56

Takes an eight-month trip to Japan with her mother and her sister Miriam, a trip that helps her connect with her cultural heritage and gain inspiration from the natural landscape. In an interview with Daniel Belgrad in 1993, she commented about her decision to go to Japan: “I decided at that time that there were a few things that I really wanted to know about my heritage and going to Japan was one way–not only of learning how to do pottery, [but] being with potters you can talk to them. And all communication would be something that was part of our medium. Communication, other things would happen. That’s what I was interested in.”  

On this trip she meets famed potter Toyo Kaneshige in his studio in Bizen (10); he eventually invites her to work in his studio where she focuses on making bowls. Kaneshige also reintroduces her to Sho- ji Hamada, So- etsu Yanagi, and other leaders of the Mingei movement as well as Kitaoji Rosanjin. She admires these artists but is not attracted to the folk-craft philosophy; she is more drawn to Yagi Kazuo, the head of the avant-garde clay movement Sodeisha (Crawling through Mud Society). She also visits the workshop of Isamu Noguchi, which is located near Rosanjin’s studio in Kamakura. Although she does not meet Noguchi on this trip, she meets him several times in Japan and the U.S. and they develop a lasting friendship. At one time, Noguchi asks Takaezu to help build a studio in Santa Fe as he had a sister living there who made clothing, but she is busy teaching and cannot. 

1957

Participates in a groundbreaking conference sponsored by the American Craft Council at Asilomar, California. It was at this conference that she meets and interacts with such important ceramic artists as Peter Voulkos and Marguerite Wildenhain. She also meets her lifelong friend Lenore Tawney, an innovative weaver. 

1958

Creates her first truly closed form, “Blue and Black Form, 1958,” a piece she still keeps in her home (11). 

1958-59

Teaches at Honolulu Academy of the Arts, fulfilling the McInerny Foundation Grant from 1951.

1959

Receives first major article, written by Conrad Brown, in the March/April issue of Craft Horizons. The article features her double-spouted bottles, teapots, and, more significantly, photos of her making an early “Mask” piece. She credits this article with helping her gain a deeper understanding, which leads to her later closed forms. 

Participates in “U.S. Handcrafts” at the Ostend International Show in Ostend, Belgium. This important traveling exhibition was organized by the United States Information Agency, which is still an important presenter and supporter of American art around the world. 

1964

This pivotal year for the artist saw both her country and her life in turmoil. The Gulf of Tonkin Resolution was passed, which led to the war in Vietnam, and many of her friends, students, and associates become subject to the draft. She loses a very close friend and studio assistant to suicide.  

She receives an offer to teach at Cranbrook and a prestigious Tiffany Foundation Grant. During the summer, she visits a friend in Clinton, New Jersey, whose environment she finds attractive (12). Especially drawn to the waterfalls in the area, she sees it as a place where she can focus on her own work, away from the Midwest and closer to New York City. With her grant, she establishes a home and studio on Main Street. She leaves the Cleveland Art Institute the following year to begin a new chapter in her career. 

1966

Travels to Bolivia and visits Machu Picchu in Peru; she wants to experience other cultures and the beauty of the land and to understand indigenous crafts. She is included in her first exhibition at the Contemporary Arts Center, which later became The Contemporary Museum, in Honolulu, Hawaii; a strong relationship with that institution continues over the years and they hold solo exhibitions of her work in 1993 and 2009. 

1967–92

Invited to teach at Princeton University by Arthur Szathmary, a professor of philosophy and advisor to the Creative Arts Program, later the Visual Arts Program. Takaezu’s philosophy of teaching follows in the footsteps of her mentor Grotell. Rather than dictate expectations and rules, she encourages students to find their own voice. The goal of Princeton’s visual arts program is “to allow the talented undergraduate to work in the creative arts under professional supervision while pursuing a regular liberal arts course of study.’” Among her prominent students at Princeton are the actress Brooke Shields and Queen Noor of Jordan. 

1969

Included in a large portfolio collection distributed by Ceramics Monthly magazine. It features a small “Moon” pot with finger marks left from her glazing and a rattle pot. 

1970

Selected for inclusion in Lee Nordness’ groundbreaking exhibition and book, Objects USA. In association with the exhibition, the Johnson Corporation sponsors the making of a documentary film, “With these Hands”, about Takaezu. In the film, she notes, “Everything has sound, even plants, everything has sound and form. I am interested in that.” She also curates an exhibition, entitled “Ceramics 70 Plus Woven Forms,” at the Everson Museum of Art. 

1973

Has her first solo exhibition with the Hunterdon Art Center (now called the Hunterdon Museum of Art) in Clinton, New Jersey. Located in the artist’s backyard, she maintains a close connection with the center and its mission. 

1974

Travels to Guatemala with Lenore Tawney, visiting indigenous weavers in Chichicastenango and Quetzaltenango (13). 

1975

Establishes a home and studio in Quakertown, New Jersey (14). Commissioned by the airport in Hilo, Hawaii, to create a permanent installation, she is also featured in the November issue of Ceramics Monthly with an article titled “A Thrown Form.” The Penland School of Crafts publishes its important book, The Penland School of Crafts Book of Pottery. The artist is a prominent figure at Penland and often teaches in summer sessions; she greatly admires director Bill Brown and they develop a close friendship. She is also elected as a Fellow of the American Craft Council. 

1977

After returning from a trip to India, Lenore Tawney moves to Quakertown and sets up an adjoining studio in Takaezu’s home, staying until 1981. Tawney redefines weaving as a sculptural art form, using scale to minimize function and elevating the craft to a fine art, much as Takaezu does with her signature closed forms, challenging conventional trends in ceramics throughout her career. Their friendship is one of the closest and longest in the artist’s life, lasting until Tawney dies in 2007. 

1979

Included in Garth Clark and Margie Hughto’s groundbreaking exhibition, “A Century of Ceramics in the United States, 1878–1978,” at the Everson Museum of Art. She makes the first of the “Gaea” series, which integrate Takaezu’s dual passions in fiber and ceramic by combining clay spheres with handwoven Honduran hammocks (15). “I was drying a moon pot in a hammock my apprentice had,” she explains. “It looked so good; it belonged there, I accepted its placement. I borrowed other hammocks and I had a group of hammocks with pots. It was fantastic.” 

1980

Receives the National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship award, which allows her to renovate her home and studio. Travels to Yugoslavia with a mycological society to hunt for mushrooms, one of many trips she takes to pursue her lifelong love of mushrooms, a passion first shared with Grotell. 

1981

Acknowledged by Ceramics Monthly in “A Select Twelve,” its Summer 1981 portfolio issue. Noting that Hamada (1978), Leach (1979) and Maria Martinez (1980) were recently deceased, the magazine queried their readers, “Who in your opinion arenow the world’s greatest living potters or ceramic artists? Takaezu was included, along with Robert Arneson, Michael Cardew, Ruth Duckworth, Ken Ferguson, John Glick, Warren MacKenzie, Don Reitz, Daniel Rhodes, Paul Soldner, Peter Voulkos, and Marguerite Wildenhain. 

The same year she visits the painter Georgia O’Keeffe (16) in Abiquiú, New Mexico. Takaezu isoften regarded as a painter on three-dimensional form. Her subtle and intense color tones, calligraphic brushwork, and splatters have categorized her work with such artists as Mark Rothko, Jackson Pollock, and Franz Kline. 

1984

In Hawaii, the Kilheau volcano erupts, scorching the earth and leaving only blackened and delimbed trees, later to be commemorated by Takaezu in “Homage to Devastation Forest.” 

1986

Featured in “American Craft Today: Poetry of the Physical,” an exhibition organized by the American Craft Museum. This important survey travels to the Denver Art Museum, Laguna Art Museum, Phoenix Art Museum, Milwaukee Art Museum, J. B. Speed Art Museum in Louisville, and the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts. She receives the first New Jersey Governor’s Arts Award. 

1987

Adding to her many accolades, the artist receives the Living Treasure Award, Honolulu, Hawaii, from the Honpa Hongwanji Mission of Hawaii. She also has her first solo exhibition with  Perimeter Gallery in Chicago. Takaezu continues to have a close relationship with Karen Johnson Boyd, the owner of the gallery, and its director Frank Paluch.  

Participates in “The Eloquent Object: The Evolution of American Art in Craft Media Since 1945” organized by the Philbrook Museum of Art, Tulsa, Oklahoma. The exhibition travels to The Oakland Museum, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Orlando Museum, Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, National Museum of Modern Art, Kyoto, and the National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo. 

1988

Mounts an important show of her weaving and ceramics, entitled “Tapestries and Recent Ceramics,” at the University of Southern Illinois, Edwardsville, Illinois. 

1989

Exhibits “Tree-Man Forest” in cast bronze, which was originally made in ceramics in 1982–1988 (17). 

1990

Invited to have a major exhibition at The Gallery at Bristol-Myers Squibb, New Jersey, which includes numerous well-known works. 

Another milestone exhibit, “Four Decades,” is organized by the Montclair Art Museum in Montclair, New Jersey. She also is featured on the cover of American Ceramics magazine. The article, authored by Vanessa Lynn, is titled “Rounder Than Round: The Closed Forms of Toshiko Takaezu.” 

1991

Featured on the cover of the Feb/Mar issue of American Craft Magazine. Article, written by Barry Targan, is titled “Outer Quiet, Inner Force.” 

1992

Featured in the June issue of Studio Potter. In the article, “Looking Backward, 1972,” Takaezu glazes a large moon in six progressive photos that reveal her painterly quality and graceful ease in glazing. Receives an Honorary Doctorate of Fine Art from Moore College of Art and Design, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. 

Has her first solo exhibition with Charles Cowles Gallery in New York City, which becomes one of the artist’s primary galleries until its closure in 2009.  

The artist’s mother dies. Takaezu, who was extremely close with her mother, feels a deep sense of loss at her passing. 

1993

In this watershed year, she exhibits in three major shows in Honolulu, Hawaii: “Toshiko Takaezu: 1950– 1980,” Honolulu Academy of Arts; “Toshiko Takaezu: 1980–1992,” The Contemporary Museum, Honolulu and “Toshiko Takaezu: 1950–1992,” Hui No’eau Visual Arts Center. Takaezu has visited Hawaii and her family home regularly throughout her life, but on this occasion her visit was capped by a University of Hawaii Honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters. 

1994

“Outdoor Sculpture” is mounted at Jack Lenor Larsen’s LongHouse Reserve in East Hampton, New York. She first met Larsen at Cranbrook where he came to work with weaving faculty member Marianne Strengell. 

Receives the New Jersey Pride Award for “The Arts,” by New Jersey Monthly Magazine and the American Craft Council’s Gold Medal Award, the organization’s highest honor awarded for consummate craftsmanship. 

1995–1998

“Toshiko Takaezu: Retrospective” is organized by the National Museum of Art, Kyoto, Japan, which travels throughout Japan and the U.S (18). 

1996

To honor her teacher, the artist writes, with former Cranbrook classmate Jeff Schlanger, Maija Grotell: Works Which Grow from Belief (Studio Potter Books). True to her nature, Takaezu often promotes her teacher’s work above her own and gives copies of the book to visitors and friends. Takaezu also receives an Honorary Doctorate from Princeton University. 

1997

Creates her first monumental closed form, called “Sirius.” Damaged in shipping, it is remade in 1999 as “Sirius II.” In June, her large vessels are featured in Studio Potter magazine in an article entitled “The Vessel and the Garden.” Five of her large pieces are featured at LongHouse Reserve in East Hampton, New York. 

1998

“Toshiko Takaezu: At Home” is mounted at the Hunterdon Museum of Art. 

1999

Featured on the cover of Studio Potter magazine with an article, “Toshiko Takaezu at Home,” written by Jeff Schlanger. 

2000

Included in “A Century of Design, Part III: 1950–1975” exhibition at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art and in the important exhibition and book “Living with Form: The Horn Collection of Contemporary Craft,” Arkansas Arts Center, Little Rock, Arkansas. 

2004

“The Poetry of Clay: The Art of Toshiko Takaezu” is organized by the Philadelphia Museum of Art. She is also included in the survey exhibition “The Nature of Craft and the Penland Experience,” Mint Museum of Craft + Design in Charlotte, North Carolina. 

2005

“Heaven and Earth” is presented at the Racine Art Museum in Racine, Wisconsin, and features the large-scale “Star Series,” her magnum opus (19). The installation includes fourteen large closed forms named after constellations and ancient monuments. Takaezu began this body of work in her sixties and seventies, a testament to her boundless energy and creative vision. 

Other exhibitions that follow include “Bronze Bells by Toshiko Takaezu” (20) at LongHouse Reserve and “Toshiko Takaezu: The Art of Clay ” organized by the Japanese American National Museum and the UCLA International Institute, Los Angeles, California.

2006

Receives a Visionaries! Award from the Museum of Arts and Design, New York. 

2006–2009

Having injured her back the previous year, the artist now dedicates her time to gifting works of art to museum collections nationwide. With humility, Takaezu sends a letter to each museum known to have one of her works; she says that it showed they already demonstrated an interest in her work. She offers works from her own holdings to create core collections for each museum. She entertains guests, curators, and historians each month to reach her goal. Generous by nature, her largesse preserves her legacy for generations.  Beneficiaries include the Arizona State University Art Museum; Carnegie Museum of Art; Crocker Museum of Art; The Contemporary Museum, Honolulu; Racine Art Museum; and other college and university art museums. 

2007–2008

Takaezu’s generous gifts inspire recipients to organize exhibitions with illustrated catalogs. The artist is highlighted in two museum shows: “Echoes of the Earth” at The Hartnell College in Salinas, California, and the Crocker Art Museum, Sacramento, California. 

2009

Returns to her studio to produce smaller scale moon and bottle forms. “Toshiko Takaezu: Recent Gifts” is exhibited at the Museum of Contemporary Craft, Portland, Oregon.

“Transcendent: Toshiko Takaezu in the State Museum Collection” is organized by the New Jersey State Museum, Trenton. The museum received twenty-nine works from the artist in 2007. 

Watershed Center for the Ceramic Arts honors four artists whose contributions to the field of ceramic art have influenced two generations of artists, collectors, and students at SOFA Chicago. “LEGENDS: Watershed Artists Honor Artists” features Ruth Duckworth, Jim Melchert, Don Reitz, and Toshiko Takaezu. 

2010

“In Memory of My Parents: An Exhibition by Takaezu Toshiko,”(21) is presented at the Okinawa Prefectural Museum & Art Museum, Naha City, Okinawa; the artist makes numerous gifts of her art to honor her parents. The Emperor of Japan sends a commendation to the artist in recognition of her generosity.

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