Masayuki Yamamoto, born in 1920, died in 2000. He belonged to a long-established family in Awaji Island, Hyogo Prefecture, known for Minpei ware pottery.
He became familiar with ceramics at an early age: as a child he would play with shards of Minpei ware he found at the river, or look at tile trivets used in the tea ceremony that were kept in the family storehouse.The beauty of the ceramic pieces swaying at the bottom of the ocean when he went for a swim at the nearby beach made a lasting impression in his mind.
In 1938 he joined his uncle’s tile wholesaling business in Nihonbashi, Tokyo, thus beginning his more than 60-year relationship with tile. The firm had started in 1899 as a pottery shop, but shifted its business to tiles in the early Taisho period, eventually becoming a pioneer in the Japanese architectural tile industry. To investigate the roots of tile, Yamamoto travelled to the world’s four cradles of civilization: the Yellow River, the Nile, the Indus and the Ganges, and the Tigris and Euphrates. He went back and forth along the Silk Road many times. His journey to trace the history of tile took him around the world to a total of over 50 countries.
In 1988, Yamamoto became the Chairman of the National Tile Industry Association. In 1990 he was awarded the Fourth Class Order of the Sacred Treasure, and in 1996 the Architectural Institute of Japan recognized him with the Cultural Prize for his “efforts to improve tile construction and finishing technology by developing and propagating new techniques over his long career in the industry.”
Yamamoto passed away in 2000.
He was a collector of tiles and ceramics from all over the world and his collection is in the Tile Museum in Tokoname.
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