HYLAND
O
ne of the world's greatest art forms is also one
of the most marginalized, namely the fantastically variegated
art of ceramics. No art historical theory seems adequately to
encompass the realm of "fired" objects, which ranges from
the works of unknown craftsmen to those of celebrated
artists working in clay. The former category of work was
celebrated and dignified by the Japanese philosopher Yanagi
Soetsu, founder of the mingei (Japanese folk craft) movement
in the 1920s and 1930s and author of the classic treatise,
The Unknown Craftsman: A Japanese Insight into Beauty, in
which he set forth criteria for mingei: that it be anonymous,
inexpensive, used by the masses, functional, produced by
hand in quantity and reflect a regional origin. These criteria
