ABSTRACT

This chapter describes how a prize was awarded by a group of critics at a major ceramic art exhibition in Japan some years ago. One of the peculiarities of the art-craft world in Japan in the postwar period has been that department stores, rather than museums of art, have been the sites of exhibition, and thus of the consecration, of ceramic art. The Japan Ceramic Art Exhibition (JCAE) has an Executive Committee, chaired ex officio by the Chairman of the Japan Arts Association and consisting of five other members, of whom four served as jury members in 1981. It constituted three panels of jurors, each of which was assigned to judge submissions to one of the exhibitions three sections. One of these was the Traditional Section for individual traditional and creative works; another was the Abstract Section for free-form objects; and the last was the Functional Pottery Section for folk art, craft, and mass-produced pottery.