This collection represents the kind of ceramics known in Japan as “folk art.” These modest and sturdy vessels were made at regional kilns and sold at low prices to a broad public, both rural and urban. In the late 19th and early 20th century, modest handmade ceramics gradually disappeared. In 1926, a group of urban intellectuals and artists banded together to protect these products. They created a new word, mingei, “crafts made for the common folk”. Calling themselves the Folk Craft Movement, they worked to create new awareness and a new market for rural crafts among the urban elite, and, in 1936 open the FolkCraftMuseum in Tokyo. Some of the older objects in this collection represent the types of rural ceramics that first caught the eye of Folk Craft Movement pioneers.
