This beautifully produced monograph on Shiro Tsujimura’s life and art is perhaps the finest book recently published to feature contemporary Japanese ceramics. The photographs capture Tsujimura at work in his studio in the mountains near Nara. And the written pieces by Hiroshi Sugimoto and Alexandra Munroe contextualize the ideas and aesthetic that inspire Tsujimura's practice.

One of the great potters working in Japan today, Shiro Tsujimura is as respected internationally as he is in his native country. Born in Nara 1947, he studied painting in Tokyo, but left to live in Sansho-ji, a Buddhist temple in northern Japan, where he became a serious student of Zen Buddhism.

After seeing a particular Korean tea bowl in a Tokyo museum, the idea of ceramics captured Tsujimura’s imagination. He returned to his native Nara, built his own wood-fired kiln in the mountains nearby, dug clay from his land, and began to teach himself how to pot. More than fifty years later, An Art of Living distills the richness of Tsujimura’s career as only great art books can.