Nami Takahashi

Nami Takahashi (b. 1973, Tokyo) is a Japanese ceramic artist working in white porcelain. She graduated from Musashino Art University's ceramics course in 1997 and went on to study at the Faenza National Ceramic Art Academy in Italy through 1999. Takahashi builds her forms by casting porcelain in multiple parts, then hand-finishing each surface before firing — a slow, deliberate process she uses to abstract organic shapes drawn from plant fruits and seeds. Left unglazed, the white porcelain records light and shadow directly across its curves, giving otherwise still objects a quiet sense of movement. Her work draws on Japanese aesthetic ideas of asymmetry and restraint rather than symmetry or ornament. She won the New Artist Prize at the 63rd Japan Traditional Craft Exhibition in 2016, the Ibaraki Prefecture Ceramic Art Museum Prize the following year, and the TOKI Oribe Grand Prize in 2018, and has shown internationally at Fine Art Asia, SOFA Chicago and COLLECT London. Her pieces are held in the collections of the National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo, and the Faenza International Ceramic Art Museum.