Tetsuya Otani

Tetsuya Otani creates porcelain wares that are made using a wheel-throwing process. The handmade pieces possess smooth surfaces and soft edges, achieved primarily by the use of a warm white glaze. Otani’s hand-thrown porcelain chases the precision of machine manufacture. He creates hyper-curated, thrillingly modern, beautiful but plain vessels.

Researching into Otani, I began to understand how an object can be beautiful yet plain, his vessels are simplistic yet captivating, the vessels are all wheel thrown and yet they turn out identical. His process of working, this clockwork precision is something I needed to explore and experiment in my own artist practice, I did this by using a premade mould so I could keep all my vessels identical. Otani removes as much information as possible from his ceramics, seeking pure functional forms, because “things that work give pleasure.” This idea of functional forms was really inspiring, I want to explore this theme further in my own practice, whether my vessels are just for display, to evoke a reaction from an audience or whether they have a function, to actually contain something.