“For me, the act of creation is a collaboration between myself, the clay and the fire. Collaboration means finding what the clay wants to be and bringing out its beauty in the way that the beauty of our surroundings is created through natural forces. Undulations in sand that has been moved by the wind, rock formations caused by landslides, the crackle and patina in the wall of an old house; all these owe their special beauty to the random hand of Nature. The fire is the ultimate random part of the collaborative equation. I hope the fire will be my ally, but I know it will always transform the clay in ways I cannot anticipate.”

Born in Osaka, Japan, Akira Satake is a musician and ceramicist based on North Carolina, US. He moved to the U.S. in 1981 where he spent two years in California before relocating to Brooklyn, NY. There, he ran a music production company, Damfino Productions, and also produced world music recordings for his label, Alula Records. In 2003 Akira and his family moved to Swannanoa, NC where he set up Akira Satake Ceramics and devoted himself to his growing passion for making pottery. A national weekly television series on PBS, A Craftsman’s Legacy, has featured his life and work. Satake’s pottery are in the collections of The Mint Museum, The Phillips Collection, Asheville Museum in NC and the Philadelphia Museum, which awarded him the National Award for Excellence in Contemporary Clay.

Selected Works of Akira Satake