Kataro Shirayamadani

Kataro Shirayamadani (Shirayamadani Kitarō ; 1865–1948), also known as Kitaro Shirayamadani, was a Japanese American decorative ceramics painter who worked for Rookwood Pottery in Cincinnati, Ohio from 1887 until 1948.

Life

Shirayamadani was born in 1865, in Tokyo, Japan.

He was already an accomplished painter of porcelainware when he came to the United States. He worked in Boston for the Fujiyama porcelain decorating workshop when he first met Maria Longworth Nichols Storer, the founder of Rookwood Pottery Company, in 1886. She hired him to work for her at Rookwood in May, 1887. the Mint Museum, the Carnegie Museum of Art, the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of the American Arts and Crafts Movement, and the Crocker Art Museum.

Legacy

In 1991 one of his pieces from 1900 sold for $198,000. Bonham's Auction House auctioned several Rookwood Pieces by Shirayamadani in April 2010.