Akoda

In 1973, Katsumata Chieko's chance meeting with American potter Fance Franck in France convinced her to abandon her plan to study industrial design and take up ceramics. She enrolled at the École National Supérieur des Arts Appliqués under Pierre Roulot where she studied until she returned to Japan in 1978. She achieves an organic quality by hand building her pieces. After an initial firing, she begins to add color by tamping on porcelain slurries tinted with metal oxides. This technique, together with multiple firings, gives her work a weathered, timeworn quality.