Nakagawa Isaku (1899-2000)
中川伊作

Nakagawa Isaku was born in Kyoto and studied with Kikuchi Keigetsu (1879-1955) at the Kyoto City School of Fine Arts and Crafts, from which he graduated in 1918 and three years later also from Kyoto City Specialist School of Painting. In 1928 he went to Okinawa for the first time together with Yanagi Soetsu (1889-1961) the head of the Folk Craft Association (Mingei Kiyokai). Nakagawa started collecting Okinawan folk ceramics which were exhibited in the Kyoto National Museum in 1938. In 1960 invited as visiting professor to the San Francisco Art Institute, where he teaches Asian painting. In 1972 Nakagawa Isaku moved to Okinawa where he started experimenting with arayaki (nanbanyaki) pottery (nanban-yaki) and built his own kiln.