🎧 Supporting Art and Tradition: The Robert Yellin Yakimono Gallery (2025)

The audio file for this article was produced by the Ceramic Arts Network staff and not read by the author.

One morning in eastern Kyoto, Japan, autumn sunlight pours through the slatted wooddoors of the Robert Yellin Yakimono Gallery, casting light and shadows on raku cups,celadon vases, a tsubo (moon jar), and raw stoneware sculptures. The curated collection isas changing as the picturesque, tree-lined Philosopher’s Path just outside the gallery. “I liketo think of this as a living museum,” says Yellin, an American-born global gallerist who hascalled Japan home since 1984. “If audiences can learn something, well, that is my goal.”

A Fascination Turned Career

Yellin’s fascination with Japanese pottery began in the 1980s witha tall tea cup, a gift from his Mashima-based host family during astudent stay. The Bizen ware’s simple form and raw refinement—flame marks, ash, and drips—forever changed Yellin’s aestheticsensibilities toward pottery. His fieldwork ever since is to seek outthose special pieces imbibed with the spirit of its maker.

While Japan’s museums and department store galleries haveserved for years to spotlight contemporary Japanese potters, Yellinhas an agile kind of autonomy that has made him a well-regardedrogue among dealers. He started out by poring over exhibitioncatalogs, learning names and terminology, collecting flea marketfinds, and knocking on studio doors.

His expertise grew, as did opportunities as a columnist, lecturer,television host, and author of the book Ode to Pottery, Sake Cupsand Flasks. For ten years, his “Ceramic Scene” column in theJapan Times shed light on the shifting world of post-war Japaneseceramics to a wide, multicultural audience. His network includedthe likes of specialist Louise Cort and New York gallerist JoanMirviss, plus private collectors making loans and gifts to majormuseums—Denver Art Museum, Museum of Fine Arts Boston, ArtInstitute of Chicago, Metropolitan Museum of Art, among others—but none of this affects Yellin’s humility. “I may be well versedand know more than most people, but I’m still learning,” he says.

Reaching an Audience

Technology of the 1990s played a vital role (at the time, the worldwide web was new) as Yellin shared catalogs of Japanese ceramicsin chat rooms, creating a demand far and wide. “It was the infancyof the internet, and somehow clients trusted me with the sale andshipping of pieces they could only see on a flat computer screen,”he says.

Today, the gallery’s posts on social media reach an even wideraudience. Highlights range from a live video at a young potter’sremote studio to news of a not-to-miss show like “The SodeishaGroup: An Era Born Out of Avant-Garde Ceramics” at MuséeTomo in Tokyo. Descriptions of gallery acquisitions tap into Yellin’sdeep reservoir of knowledge, like a mini history lecture. He alsoadds non-pottery snapshots—the debut of cherry blossoms inspring, a nearby secret temple at sunset, or the ceremonial summerbonfire seen on nearby Daimonji mountain—like a postcardfrom a friend.

The Six Ancient Kilns

The Yakimono Gallery is a former kimono textile shop in a quietKyoto neighborhood near the iconic Silver Pavilion. But, the keyfor Yellin is its proximity, within a day’s drive, to the Japan Heritagesite known as the Six Ancient Kilns.

Since Yellin’s first visit to the kilns, he has returned countlesstimes to nurture ties with potters, find new talent, and pay hisrespects to retired elders he has admired. “I love the antiques, buttradition is a living thing . . . and my love of Bizen is well known,”he says. His gallery has placed works of new and emerging clayartists, as well as National Living Treasures such as Jun Isezaki,whose son Koichiro produces works of interest to Yellin. “I want tosupport the living artists who keep these traditions alive,” he says.

Keeping Traditions Alive

Back at the gallery, a young American who discovered the galleryon social media enters the calm space for the very first time. Heappears awestruck, and slightly befuddled. “I don’t know whereto start,” he tells Yellin, “what to look at first.”

“That’s perfect,” Yellin replies. “It’s like stepping into a dancehall where you don’t yet know who you’ll meet. Wait for the one tocatch your eye from across the room,” says Yellin, “to see who you’lltake home.” He clearly enjoys this. Soon after, an efficient-lookingJapanese woman walks in, a tour group leader asking for a date tobring in a group of nine. Yellin responds quickly, also in Japanese,apparently overbooked as he shows her the page of his calendarbook. They settle on a time, she quickly bows and leaves.

Yellin introduces the next visitor as sensei Kato Takahiko, usingthe honorific title for the veteran Shigaraki potter and old friend.Together they unwrap Takahiko’s latest works: guinomi (sake cups),koro (incense burner), several straw-wrapped tokkuri (flasks), and amountainous sculpture vase. A set of drinking vessels tall enoughfor beer, a personal request by Yellin, will be sold and shipped to acollector in Germany by the next day. When asked about pottersproducing non-traditional forms, Yellin replies, “There’s littleneed for objects like tea storage jars anymore, they belong to alexicon of former times. New adaptations prevent the stagnationof a tradition.”

Takahiko has built several anagama (wood-fired, single-tunnel)kilns over his career. “This was the first firing of the last kiln I’llever build,” he tells Yellin with twinkling eyes and a somber smile.Turning a piece in his hand, Yellin points out the visible specks ofquartz pebbles in the clay body, typical of Shigaraki ware. He alsopoints out the small stamp called hidari uma or “left horse” on thepieces, an ancient tradition upon the first-time firing of a kiln tobring good luck and fortune. Takahiko apologizes for not bringingthe collection in sooner, but he had delays finding a new craftsmanfor the custom wooden boxes housing each piece.

On the same day, Ichino Shusaku, a young potter from Tamba,another of the Six Ancient Kilns, has driven three hours with hisfamily to deliver new work to the gallery. His wife is dressed intraditional kimono, attentive to the child in her lap, while the mendiscuss the pair of stunning wood-fired vases. Within hours, thepieces are cataloged and posted as new acquisitions.

The Give and Take in Life

Yellin often marvels at how his life has unfurled in this farawayland. He is the kind of person who tells stories starting with,“There’s this one guy . . .,” or bursts into a 70s rock song, manyverses, a cappella. He is also one to commission an elderly craftspersonat a local fair to make ornaments as holiday gifts for clientsor invite guests for an impromptu music concert by a travelingshamisen player at the gallery. “It is important for me to not onlytake from this culture, but to also give back,” he says.

Yellin’s private collection is a variety of sake cups. “Some aregifts from potters who are no longer with us, or were included inmy book, plus I happen to like sake. These are the pieces hangingwith me until the end,” he says.

But every day he begins with a ritual of sipping warm waterfrom his favorite vessel, a Bizen cup, between both hands.

the author Victoria Woodard Harvey is an author and journalist covering trends in food, culture, and the arts. A frequent contributor to Ceramics Monthly, she lives on the central coast of California.