Kataro Shirayamadani (''Shirayamadani Kitarō'' ; 1865–1948), also known as Kitaro Shirayamadani was a Japanese

ceramic A ceramic is any of the various hard, brittle, heat-resistant and corrosion-resistant materials made by shaping and then firing an inorganic, nonmetallic material, such as clay, at a high temperature. Common examples are earthenware, porcelain ...

s painter who worked for

Rookwood Pottery Rookwood Pottery is an American ceramics company that was founded in 1880 and closed in 1967, before being revived in 2004. It was initially located in the Over-the-Rhine neighborhood in Cincinnati, Ohio, and has now returned there. In its heyday ...

Cincinnati, Ohio Cincinnati ( ) is a city in the U.S. state of Ohio and the county seat of Hamilton County. Settled in 1788, the city is located at the northern side of the confluence of the Licking and Ohio rivers, the latter of which marks the state line wit ...

from 1887 until 1948.

Life

Shirayamadani was born in Tokyo. He was already an accomplished painter of porcelainware when he came to the United States. He worked in Boston for the Fujiyama porcelain decorating workshop when he first met Maria Longworth Nichols Storer, the founder of Rookwood Pottery, in 1886. She hired him to work for her at Rookwood in May, 1887. A vase he made won a Grand Prize at the 1900 Paris Exposition Universelle. The vase was acquired by the

Philadelphia Museum of Art The Philadelphia Museum of Art (PMoA) is an art museum originally chartered in 1876 for the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia. The main museum building was completed in 1928 on Fairmount, a hill located at the northwest end of the Benjamin Fr ...

in 1901 and is still in its collection. He decorated table lamp bases that were combined with

stained glass Stained glass is coloured glass as a material or works created from it. Throughout its thousand-year history, the term has been applied almost exclusively to the windows of churches and other significant religious buildings. Although tradition ...

shades made by Tiffany Studios, and one such lamp is in the collection of the

Los Angeles County Museum of Art The Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) is an art museum located on Wilshire Boulevard in the Miracle Mile, Los Angeles, California, Miracle Mile vicinity of Los Angeles. LACMA is on Museum Row, adjacent to the La Brea Tar Pits (George C. Pa ...

Museum collections

His work is in many museum collections, including the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Mint Museum, the

Carnegie Museum of Art The Carnegie Museum of Art, is an art museum in the Oakland neighborhood of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Originally known as the Department of Fine Arts, Carnegie Institute and was at what is now the Main Branch of the Carnegie Library of Pittsbur ...

, the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum, the

, the

Metropolitan Museum of Art The Metropolitan Museum of Art of New York City, colloquially "the Met", is the largest art museum in the Americas. Its permanent collection contains over two million works, divided among 17 curatorial departments. The main building at 1000 ...

, the

Museum of the American Arts and Crafts Movement A museum ( ; plural museums or, rarely, musea) is a building or institution that cares for and displays a collection of artifacts and other objects of artistic, cultural, historical, or scientific importance. Many public museums make these ...

, and the

Crocker Art Museum The Crocker Art Museum is the oldest art museum in the Western United States, located in Sacramento, California. Founded in 1885, the museum holds one of the premier collections of Californian art. The collection includes American works dating f ...

Legacy

In 1991 one of his pieces from 1900 sold for $198,000. Bonham's Auction House auctioned several Rookwood Pieces by Shirayamadani in April 2010.

References

External links

Antiques Roadshow appraisal of a Rookwood vase decorated by Kataro Shirayamadani
Artists from Cincinnati 1865 births 1948 deaths Artists from Tokyo Japanese emigrants to the United States Rookwood Pottery Company {{Cincinnati-stub