studiotouya.com

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What is "Tou Ya"

Literally, "Tou" is the pronunciation of Japanese word (Kanji) which means "Ceramics", and also "Ya" means "Home".

It's the name of our studio, Takuro Shibata & Hitomi A. Shibata,
and our mission is due to produce simple & fun tableware for the daily life.

Takuro Shibata's works


Hitomi A. Shibata's works


Story of Touya

We lived in Shigaraki which is well-known and one of the biggest pottery village in Japan from 1996 to 2001.
We set up our studio and kiln in 1999, and named our studio as "Touya".

We were very fortunate we had chance to obtain American ceramics experience, moved to Massachusetts in 2001.

Hitomi became an international special student of grad program, University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth,
Takuro had work-exchange program at the Worcester Center for Crafts (MA), Peters Valley Craft Education Center(NJ),
also had studio space with local craft artists in the New Bedford down town.

After MA, we had chance to become residency artists of the Cub Creek Foundation for the Ceramics Arts,
so we moved to Appomattox, VA in 2003 and stayed there for a half year.

Our experience in USA was wonderful and came up to 2 years.

Left USA, we arrived to London, and visited many countries in Europe.

We kept traveling to the East, and we finally arrived to Tokyo, Japan in July 2003.

We came back to Shigaraki again, reset-up studio Touya and also our new life there.
It was big culture shock for us to see Japanese ceramics after long long journey.

Suddenly, we were supposed to come back to USA to get involved in ceramics again,
so that we moved to Seagrove, NC with our Shigaraki-Cat in June 2005.

He got sick during traveling which was very miserable



Life in Seagrove

Seagrove is located in the middle of North Carolina state.
It's the most biggest and well-known pottery village in USA as far as I know.
There are over 120 pottery studios in this town, and potters make living from producing functional pots.

It's very important for us to find the place which has rich ceramic culture, interesting potters life,
a lot of fire wood, huge land, beautiful nature, and good clays.
We think Seagrove has all resources we need.

We would like to make simple tableware, and enjoy living in the slow & rich life here as Japanese potters.

Hope you enjoy our website.


Takuro Shibata
Hitomi A. Shibata