Ceramic Model Hozuki "ho-3a"
From "Hozuki Series" - Wood-fired Ceramics
Manufactured by Momoko Takeshita Keane
Japan, 2025
Ceramics, Scartched surface and underglazing, reduction firing, wood kiln

Measurements
22 x 19 x 18h cm
8,7 x 7,4 x 7,1h in

Edition
Unique Piece

Museums
New Taipei City Yingge Ceramics Museum, Taiwan
Cincinatti Art Museum, Cincinatti, OH, USA
Toledo Museum of Art, Toledo, OH, USA

About
The Hozuki series by Momoko Takeshita Keane reflects her mastery of hand-building techniques and her dialogue with fire. Each sculptural vessel is shaped slowly and intuitively through coil-building and pinch-building, processes that allow the form to grow organically from the base upward. Once complete, the work is placed into a wood-fired kiln as greenware—without glaze or preliminary bisque firing—and subjected to an intense firing cycle lasting three to five days.
In this demanding process, flame and ash act as collaborators. The surface tones and subtle variations emerge not from applied pigment but from the natural deposit of ash and the shifting atmosphere inside the kiln. As the artist herself notes, “I design the form, and the kiln designs the color.”
The resulting works carry an elemental duality: deliberate in their structure yet unpredictable in their surface, they embody a balance between human intention and natural chance. With their earthy textures and quiet presence, the Hozuki pieces reveal Keane’s ability to transform clay into objects that are not only material but also poetic.

Biography
Momoko Takeshita Keane is a Kyoto-based ceramic artist whose work bridges the traditions of Japanese kogei and the language of contemporary sculpture. Born and raised in Kyoto, she was surrounded from an early age by the city’s rich craft heritage, which sparked her fascination with clay. She first studied ceramics in the historic pottery region of Shigaraki in the 1970s, later refining her practice at the Kyoto City Ceramic Research Institute, before establishing her own studio.
Her trajectory took a decisive turn when she moved to the United States in 2002. Working with an anagama kiln at Fred Herbst’s studio in upstate New York, she fully embraced the unpredictable beauty of wood-firing, discovering how flame and ash could shape the surface of her vessels as much as her own hand. During her years in Ithaca, she was deeply influenced by the openness of the local ceramic community, as well as by the freedom she felt outside of Japan’s established traditions. Exposure to artists such as Lucy Rie and Isamu Noguchi, along with the philosophy of mingei—the Japanese folk craft movement—further informed her approach.
Today, Keane creates her works in a serene studio on the outskirts of Kyoto, adjacent to the garden designed by her husband, landscape architect Marc Peter Keane. Her practice is characterized by hand-built forms using coiling techniques, finished with distinctive fabric-like textures incised into the clay surface. Fired over days in wood-fueled kilns without glaze, her ceramics emerge as singular works that embrace imperfection, chance, and the transformative power of fire.
Keane’s vessels are often described as standing between the rustic and the refined, the simple and the complex. They embody her conviction that ceramics can transcend utility to become poetic objects, at once contemporary and timeless. Through her synthesis of heritage and experimentation, she has carved out a unique voice in the international ceramics world, carrying the essence of Japanese kogei into the 21st century.