Photo by Franco Salmoiraghi
Ceramic Master Clayton Amemiya’s exhibit at the East Hawai’i Cultural Center in Hilo just concluded. He is part of an exhibit at the Hawai’i Japanese Center called “Sansei Connection” (September 18 – November 14, 2026). The other Sansei (3rd generation Japanese American) artists are Hiroki Morinoue (painter and printmaker), Glenn Yamanoha (painter and printmaker), and Lonny Tomono (carpenter and woodworker).
Roosters crow loudly periodically on his estate near Hilo, Hawai’i. Using the anagama firing methods, he builds an Ohia wood fire in his outdoor brick subterranean kiln and keeps it burning nonstop for 100 hours—four and a half days and nights at temperatures up to 2200 degrees. A chimney draws heat from the front to the back of the kiln. He and his assistants stoke it with more wood every ten to twenty minutes and judge the temperature until the flame burns white hot. Once the firing is complete, it takes 100 more hours for the kiln to cool.
The clay is dark stoneware with iron in it. The silica in the wood ash creates the serendipitous, irregular glaze patterns on each vessel. During the firing process, once temperatures exceed 2000 degrees, the silica melts into the surfaces and ridges. Amemiya’s forms have unique sculpted wave patterns, shapes, hues, and other distinctive qualities. Small teapots require several wheel-formed pieces to be joined together.
Clayton’s website contains a film Refined by Fire about the anagama firing process. In it, gallerist and potter Stephen Freedman discusses how Amemiya’s decorating processes are unique, slow, and “completely distinct from any other wood firing process I’ve ever seen or been involved in myself.” Amemiya’s ceramics are popular with museums, hotels, and individuals. The vases, cups, teapots, and vessels hold water, tea, and live flowers and are functional but also are unique sculptural forms.
Clayton Amemiya was born in Hawai’i to a Japanese-speaking father but grew up speaking English. He studied Japanese at the University of Hawai’i and became a United States Vice Consul to Japan in Okinawa and then at the United States Embassy in Tokyo. A friend introduced him to the great ceramic artist Seisho Kuniyoshi, and Amemiya’s study of forms of ceramics began. Kuniyoshi’s teacher was Shōji Hamada, a great ceramic master.
He told me, “Seisho Kuniyoshi (1943-1999) was a great Okinawan potter who I became very good friends with during his lifetime. The legendary potter Shōji Hamada was Kuniyoshi’s mentor. Hamada escaped the cold winters in his Japanese mainland home in Mashiko by spending weeks in warm Okinawa.”
All three artists draw inspiration from fourteenth century Korean tea bowls. Amemiya adds coils and sculpts ridges into his pots that echo the Jōmon period of Japan’s first known civilization. For over thirty years, he has drawn inspiration from nature and from historic Japanese, Chinese, and Korean art.
The three-acre estate has been planted with native tropical trees and plants. Dozens of flowering wild trees and plants include Heliconias, Costus, Jaboticaba, tangerine, orange, and avocado trees; the estate is loaded with natural beauty. It has 100 feral chickens whose eggs are organic— “I eat a lot of eggs”—the artists reports.
The name Amemiya, in Japanese, is two characters that mean “rain shrine.” In 2015, I witnessed the artist stoking his kiln during days of intermittent rain as the fire inside the kiln burned hotter and hotter—a shrine in the rain. Visiting him in his created world in 2026 was an equally magical experience. G&S
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