Hiroshi Taruta

A Reticulated Porcelain (Hotarude) Artist from Aichi

Hiroshi Taruta is a porcelain artist based in Seto, Aichi Prefecture, home to one of Japan’s Six Ancient Kilns. He specializes in hotarude, a technique that lets light shine through porcelain. While most hotarude is made with small dots, Taruta is known for carving fine lines instead. Alongside tea cups, sake cups and rocks cups, he also creates larger sculptural pieces, and in 2024 his work received the TOKI Oribe Grand Prize at the 16th Exhibition of Contemporary Ceramics for the Tea Ceremony.

Hiroshi Taruta

Hotarude — light held in porcelain

Hotarude is a porcelain technique with roots in Ming Dynasty China, where it is known as linglong; in English, it is often called "rice grain" porcelain. To make it, the potter first throws a vessel on the wheel and then carves openings into the unfired body until the porcelain is pierced through. These openings are then filled with transparent glaze. During firing, the glaze melts and sets in place, so that light passes through wherever the clay was removed. In the dark, the effect resembles fireflies glowing within the porcelain.

Most hotarude and rice grain porcelain use small round or grain-shaped openings. Taruta, however, carves lines. Because linear openings cover a larger area than dots or grains, the risk of cracking rises sharply, which is why linear hotarude is considered one of the most demanding forms of the technique. Even so, he chooses lines because of the light they create. As he puts it:

"The light that comes through the lines — it's like light breaking through clouds, or a beam cutting across a dark room. That's the light I want to work with."
— Hiroshi Taruta

Works by Hiroshi Taruta

One thing, pursued completely

Taruta grew up in Nagoya, Aichi Prefecture. When it came time to choose a high school, he chose ceramics, though by his own admission it was largely by process of elimination: he simply liked making things with his hands. He went on to Seto Pottery High School, which has more than a century of history in a region that has shaped Japanese ceramic production. After completing its two-year advanced ceramics course, he apprenticed under ceramic artist Masanori Hatano in 2007. The two often talked during afternoon breaks, and one remark from his teacher stayed with him.

"There is something to be said for taking one thing as far as it will go."
— Masanori Hatano, his teacher

At the time, however, Taruta wanted to work across many materials, combining wood, metal and clay. Because of this, the advice did not resonate with him right away, and it took years before he understood what it meant.

Europe, and a reversal

In 2015, Taruta spent ten months traveling through Europe, visiting pottery schools in southern Germany, meeting ceramic artists in the north and seeing work in Sweden. There, he experienced a reversal. In Japan, people had sometimes described his hotarude pieces as having a "European quality," yet in Europe the same pieces were received as distinctly Japanese. In other words, the same work was labeled differently depending on who was looking and where. This led him to ask what would make his work unmistakably his own, whoever was looking. His answer was this:

"If I take hotarude as far as it can go, it becomes something no one else has made. That was when I knew."
— Hiroshi Taruta

Doing what only he can do

Today, Taruta speaks plainly about what matters to him in his work:

"What matters is doing what only you can do — creating something from zero. To master something is to embody beauty. But mastery requires focus. There is no time to reach in every direction."
— Hiroshi Taruta

Most of his work so far has been tableware, which is made within the limits that function sets: a cup must hold liquid and sit comfortably in the hand. Now, however, he is beginning to step outside those limits, toward sculptural pieces whose form is entirely his own. Yuragi ("fluctuation"), which received the Excellence Award at the 1st Japan Cultural Grand Prix, is one example of this new direction. At 15 cm tall, it is larger than most of his work, and in hotarude, size is a serious risk, because the larger the piece, the greater the chance it will crack. Even so, after twenty hours in the kiln, Yuragi came out without a single crack, a result that shows just how far he has taken the technique. Of the piece, he says:

"I wanted the curves of hotarude to generate softness. The piece became something between tension and calm — light through carved lines, the blue-white of celadon glaze, a rhythm close to 1/f fluctuation."
— Hiroshi Taruta

Taruta at work in his studio

Looking ahead, Taruta says he wants his work to be shown in a museum. Given the direction his work is taking, that goal does not seem far off.

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Hiroshi Taruta

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