Go Takagi

Go Takagi | 高木剛

Ukiha, Fukuoka, Japan

 

Born in Kagoshima, Kyushu, Go started his pursuit of work as a ceramist in Kyoto. Throughout his 20s, he absorbed the techniques and styles from participating in work-in-residence programs in Korea, where a significant portion of Japanese ceramics lineage stem from, while studying under a gallerist/curator of craft works in Kyoto’s city center.

As he moved his base to the mountainous area of northern Kyoto, building a house and a kiln with his partner doing almost everything about the household by themselves, Go discovered his preference in the style of daily utility potteries from ancient Lee Dynasty Korea, when the handcraft was refined by accumulated work of anonymous craftsmen over centuries. To his eyes, they were the optimum and ultimate forms of beauty in the sense of crafts used in daily lives of people, juxtaposed to the ceramics as valuable art pieces commissioned by the rich and powerful of the time.

Over years, Go’s style of work and life also became attuned to that of ancient potters, he feels, using only naturally-sourced materials and devices to create.

In 2018, as their daughter was born, they looked for a land in Ukiha, which was located in the mid-way of where each of the couple came from, and there was an environment available for Go to create a kiln suited to his style.

Borrowing some help from his relatives, they built an authentic form of a brick kiln where he fires the ceramics with logs from the same mountain whose ashes would give a natural glaze on the pieces. Go creates with locally sourced clay and some delivered from specific locations to mix at the proportions suited to the image of the works he creates.

He says he feels contentment when he pauses to sip tea with the cups and pots he makes in his workshop in the mountains. “Moving my kiln here was more about creating a life where I can balance taking care of the family and work, while continuing my creative pursuit true to what I believe is beautiful.”