Kawai Kanjirō

A founder of the mingei folk-craft movement with Yanagi Sōetsu and Shoji Hamada, Kawai began with refined copies of Chinese and Korean glazes, then grew freer and stranger. His later pieces, made at the home and climbing kiln in Kyoto that is now his memorial museum, are thick-walled, press-moulded and asymmetric, with splashed glazes of copper red, iron and cobalt, and some look more like sculpture than vessels. He refused national honours, including Living National Treasure status. The Kyoto house shows the workshop and kiln exactly as his family kept it.