Menagerie: Thomas Kakinuma

A very popular field of collecting among Canadian ceramics is the wide array of birds and animals by Thomas Kakinuma. He looms large among the respected potters in Canada, with an impressive career that spanned several decades. 

​Kakinuma was a Japanese immigrant who came to Canada before WWII, spending most of his career on the west Coast. He taught ceramics at the UBC Pottery Hut in the 1950s, where he worked with Rex Mason and Olea Davis. Some summers he taught at the Banff Centre at the invitation of Luke Lindoe. His work was shown and highly honoured at numerous prestigious ceramic exhibitions.

Kakinuma’s work is varied and all highly sought after and collected. His vases and tradition forms are exceptional. His sculptural works, which he is said to have favoured, are stunning and very hard to find. 

Thomas Kakinuma vase ca. 1959.

It is his animal figurines, however, that people seem to associate him most with. Other Canadian artists from across the country were also making stylized animals during the 1960s and 1970s. The Deichmanns and Lorenzens in the Maritimes, and the Harlanders and Jarko Zarvi in Ontario. The Schwenks made some in British Columbia but no one could match the variety and numbers of Thomas Kakinuma.

His minimalist style reflects his Japanese heritage and the modernist influences of the time. The figures are simple thrown or pinched forms he usually shaped into birds but he also made fish, cats, dogs, monkeys, and people, among others. Glazes were simply done - usually dipped, with some details applied with slip. His work is easily identified and marked with a stylized “TK” and occasionally he would sign his name "T. Kakinuma" on larger and significant pieces.

Thomas Kakinuma passed away in 1982, and the first major retrospective of his work was shown in Spring 2018. 
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If you have a piece of Thomas Kakinuma pottery you would like confirmed or to sell, please contact me.