Having grown up in Kyushu, Japan, Takamori developed his distinguished career in the United States. A seminal figure in the ceramic arts for more than thirty years, Takamori explores themes of cultural and corporeal duality by engaging the history of Eastern and Western aesthetics. Bold form and color defines his body of work, which is highly suggestive of arcane human emotions and sensuality. Takamori’s “stage-set approach” offers a platform for his ponderous characters, which carry more narrative weight as a group in a collective memory than as individual pieces. The various celebrations of his explorative approaches to contemporary ceramics began with his breakthrough “envelope vessels” series in 1981, inspired by Japanese printmaker Kitagawa Utamaro.