A veteran ceramicist on the Kasama scene, Hiroshi Kikuchi is a distinctive presence in his work and in his person. At the Sannōgama kiln he operates to the north of Kasama with his family, he makes work that has a unique place in galleries and tables around Japan.

After a period training in Kasama and elsewhere in the 1970s, Kikuchi established his own kiln in 1982. From here he has produced works with angularity and texture that reference a controlled form of the nature around him. In particular he has a line of work that he refers to as ‘Saideiji’, a portmanteau word containing characters for colour, mud like soil and ceramics. In this style he mixes slip with pigment, and has the blocks of textured colour appear alongside shapes in black glaze. The material in these boundaries references the ceramic clay in the hands of the potter himself.