In Conversation | Akiko Hirai with Mike Goldmark

April 24, 2025 by Jay

Internationally renowned Japanese potter Akiko Hirai shares her artistic journey with Mike Goldmark, revealing the motivations behind choosing pottery over psychology, her family’s influence and a mentor’s guidance.

Akiko discusses the balance of fragility and strength in her work, often intentionally bringing her work to the point of collapse and the psychological concepts contained in her pots. She also discusses the importance of daily routines, spontaneity and decision-making in the studio. She reflects on past experiences, the challenges faced, and the unique identity formed through her work.

Critics Choice | Moon Jars by Akiko Hirai

April 9, 2025 by Jay

The moon jar is the most famous ceramic form to come out of Korea, beloved by collectors and potters alike. They become a celebration of the imperfections in nature, with slight distortions that occur to the shape during firing.

Akiko Hirai’s moon jars are perhaps her most significant and well-known work. The extraordinary surfaces are completely unlike the traditional moon jar, which is pale, simple, white and austere, and encapsulates everything that is magical about Hirai’s work.

Akiko Hirai: Still Unfolding

September 7, 2023 by Jay

High above the glaze-spattered floor of Akiko Hirai’s studio, Moon Jars roost on the shelves like tranquil, plump-bellied hens. The traditional Korean vessel – named for its milkish colour and rounded outline – is a signature piece for the artist, whose expressive corruptions of its centuries-old form have gifted the once prosaic object a startling … Read more

Documentary | Akiko Hirai | Mark of the Pot

June 13, 2024March 31, 2023 by Jay

Two years in the making, this latest Goldmark documentary film finds Japanese born potter Akiko Hirai at work in her London studio. The rise in popularity of Hirai’s work has been meteoric and she has now has sell-out exhibitions all over the world. Hirai is renowned for creating Moon Jars – a traditional Korean vessel … Read more

Masterclass | Kang-hyo Lee | Moon Jars

June 15, 2024July 27, 2021 by Lee Lee Kang-hyo

Join the great contemporary Korean potter, Kang-hyo Lee, as he makes moon jars from start to finish.

Kang-hyo Lee’s moon jars are not just beautiful ceramic objects: they are spiritual reflections of the natural world, alternately calm and contemplative, dynamic and dramatic.

Born in Seoul in 1961, Kang-hyo Lee is widely regarded as one of the finest Korean potters working today. His work is rooted in the major Korean ceramic traditions of Onggi pottery – voluminous storage jars originally designed for holding fermented food – and Punch’ong decoration, where white slip is layered and brushed over dark clay.

Perhaps the most beguiling of his many beautiful forms, however, are Lee’s moon jars, a type of pottery that inhabits a special place in the history of Korean ceramics.

In his moon jars, however, the decorative process is slowed to a serenely meditative pace. Scratched and splattered slip-marks echo dappled moonlight between woodland trees; blushes of peach and cream-white reflect the luminescence of a full-moon in the early evening sky.

Both quiet and vital, powerful and with presence, Lee’s moon jars are the intimate results of his search for a beautiful life.