Before becoming a ceramicist, Kazunori Hamana led a different life in the Japanese capital Tokyo. As manager of both a fashion store and a restaurant, he sat at the pulse of a vibrant, cosmopolitan and modern-day Japan. Along the way, however, he developed a fascination for traditional Asian crafts; one of them being tsubos, the Japanese equivalent of Roman amphorae.

Frustrated by the lack of contemporary tsubos to complete his collection, Hamana decided to take matters into his own hands: he left the city and settled in a remote house by the sea where he started working as a ceramicist, a farmer and a fisherman. Today, he has developed a very own sense of style, creating irregular pots built from coils with a unique skin of scratches and scored glazes.

The result is a contemporary interpretation of an age-old Japanese ceramic culture; one that pays tribute to its heritage while approaching it from an unconventional angle. Hamana?s tsubos all have the presence of objects that have been washed smooth by the sea. They are shaped by the coastal environment from which they were born and undoubtedly echo the scenery from which the artist draws his inspiration.