Akiko Hirai’s work is unmistakable. At twenty paces, her moon jars and faceted bottles betray her hand. Those familiar with her work will be able to picture in their mind’s eye some of her most celebrated pieces – vessels and moon jars covered with a distinctive pale blue-green running glaze. Flowing over the encrusted additions to her jars, the glaze is reminiscent of a stream trickling over pebbles and boulders, or ice within a glacier. Watery and liquid, these pieces are fluid and dynamic.
Hirai’s new body of work remains as distinctive as ever but demonstrates a deft and confident expansion into new territory – a shift from water to earth. Rather than the blue-green tones and high gloss glaze used previously, these pieces are paler, browner and more matte, appearing dry and in some cases almost desiccated. Most importantly, they are still and quiet. To look at them is to feel instantly calmer and more grounded.
Remaining at a (sensible) distance from the digital world, Hirai is instead inspired by the environment in which she finds herself. Last year, she visited the Tuscan town of Volterra, a walled mountaintop settlement, inhabited continuously for 10,000 years. Unable to spread outwards, new civilizations were instead built on top of the previous resulting in layers of structures, medieval built on top of Roman, built on top of Etruscan. This is an old town, with an even older town beneath it. Hirai describes how excavation has taken place in some locations to reveal these historic layers, but they are only partially disclosed. For the most part, these buried structures remain hidden, ‘ageing quietly under the town’ [her words]. Although mostly unseen, these architectural strata persist, always present but unknown to the people on the pavement above. Beneath their feet, these ancient buildings gradually return to the earth, becoming sand once more.
This static, layered presence is reflected in Hirai’s new work. On large dishes and Poppy Pods, she uses layers of slip, building them up, wet on top of dry, encouraging a network of small fissures to appear on the surface. On smaller dishes and cups, layers of kohiki form the sole decoration. Some moon jars are topped with what appears to be sand, so soft that you might reach out and draw a line through it with your finger. This final layer is clay, sprinkled onto the surface and fired at a lower temperature after the initial high firing of the clay body. It is a clever mirage, appearing soft but in fact remaining hard enough to resist pressure. Indeed, this textured surface conceals the clay body, newly built by human hands, and instead hinting at something of the earth, long present, having accumulated layers of sand, dust and lichen on its surface, or perhaps something recently unearthed.
This appearance of delicacy is replicated in the surface additions to the moon jars. Previously, these accretions were chunky and robust, almost geometric. They seemed like stones, perhaps erupting from the mouth of jar, over which ran the watery blue-green glaze. There was a solidity and fixedness to them. In this new body of work, the additions are lighter and airier, gently kissing the surface of the pot, perhaps about to take flight. Hirai was inspired by the moths she watched, in flight and then at rest. In their stillness, they camouflaged perfectly with the breeze block and wooden background of the studio, seeming to merge into their environment. Were they dead or alive? It was hard to tell. But their powdery dryness was beautiful either way. They reminded her too of the butterflies she had seen in the Ryugujo Butterfly Garden in Okinawa, Japan. Pale and ghostly, there had been so many butterflies in the small space that they had seemed almost uncanny. Here they have been reimagined by Hirai, replicated in a paste made from flour, alighting on the jars in amongst applied leaves and twigs.
Hirai’s work is intentional and specific. She wants it to remind people of the natural world. Each artistic choice that she makes is not simply a vague allusion to an idea but a direct signal to her original intentions, whether that be moths, butterflies or sand. Hirai speaks refreshingly on the subject of artistic intentionality, citing Rubin’s vase as an example. This famously ambiguous image (developed around 1915 by Danish psychologist Edgar Rubin) shows either the profiles of two people facing one another (in black) or a vase (in white). It is possible to see both images, but not at the same time. Our individual perception of it differs too. At first glance, some of us see the figures in profile, others see the vase. Hirai argues that similarly, there are different ways of seeing and interpreting art. Many artists claim that although they may have a specific idea in mind when they make a piece, they do not care how others view it or interpret it. Hirai does not agree. She has clarity of intention and therefore her work is more clearly directive. She is keen to nudge viewers towards a particular way of looking so that they see what she sees, or what she intends to communicate. In this way, there is an enhanced connection between her and her audience. Each piece is a direct mediation between the artist and viewer.
This urge for connection stems in part from an effort to overcome what Hirai feels are cultural aesthetic differences between Europe and Japan, for example differing attitudes to symmetry and asymmetry. For her, these differences can be traced back to Japanese polytheism and Buddhism. She explains that in Japan, objects are not regarded or assessed individually but always in relation to the other objects around them (‘many Gods’). In the West, objects are not in dialogue with their environment. They are inspected in isolation and therefore expected to be perfect (‘one God’). Conversely, Hirai’s work is always in dialogue with its broader context, as well as with the viewer. We are in a three-way conversation. This is most explicit in her dishes and plates decorated with free-floating body parts. These forms are moulded, rather than hand-built, echoing traditional rococo-esque French dinnerware. They continue a seam first mined during Hirai’s exhibitions at the New Craftsman Gallery in St Ives, Cornwall. There she studied people on the beach, translating observations of her immediate surroundings into figurative motifs of isolated body parts. These images are simultaneously universal, representing all bodies, but specific in that they depict one particular body on one particular day.
Standing among this new body of work in Hirai’s north London studio, winter sun streaming in through the large windows, there is much to see. Moon jars large and small jostle with pared back Poppy Pods of various sizes, their textured and mottled surfaces catching and playing with the light. Useful cups, plates and dishes contrast with groups of faceted bottles, larger than ever before, which stand below experimental wall-mounted pieces, spectral white twigs, hollow, big enough to hold only a single flower stem. There is a surety to this range of work, a confidence in knowing that all these different forms and finishes can be brought to fruition. I ask Hirai how she knows when something is finished. She explains that there is a small ‘conclusion’ somewhere on each pot, which can be seen from a particular angle or viewpoint – another hint that she is keen for people to see. Irrespective of the size or shape, these works all embody the qualities Hirai has instilled in them – they are calm, quiet and patient, almost watchful. They are comforting without becoming comfortable, drawing the eye and engaging the mind but also soothing us with a sense of connectedness with both the artist and the natural world.
This sense of contemplative stillness is present in much of the Japanese cultural heritage of which Hirai was aware growing up, including the tea wares made by the Raku family for over 450 years. On visiting the Raku Museum in Kyoto recently, Hirai took note of different works made by Raku masters at different ages. She noticed how the age of the maker was reflected in the work they created, through their altered physicality as well as their change of perspective. She saw that the pots made in older age were often softer and gentler than those made by the same person in early youth. Hirai has decades left in which to continue making but she feels it is true that her work has changed with experience. For me, this recent body of work marks a step forwards, conveying a softness and stillness that belies the immense skill and confidence of the maker. In a world where everything rushes past at a dizzying pace, it takes bravery to stop and create work that is explicitly earthy and grounded, quiet and calm. Standing in front of a pot by Hirai, you are encouraged to pause and connect with it in the present, as well as with the artist at the moment she completed it. It is a moment of calm and interrelation that should be savoured.
Helen Ritchie Senior Curator of Modern & Contemporary Applied Arts Fitzwilliam Museum, University of Cambridge March 2025
