Koichiro Isaka was traveling with his wife in the south of England when he first became aware of a ceramic tradition. Like many Japanese, he knew the name Bernard Leach, who studied with Shoji Hamada in the early 1900s as part of Japan's folkloric revivalist movement and helped establish Mashiko as a pottery town. He also knew the name of the Cornish fishing village St Ives, where Leach was based. But to discover that Britain's contemporary scene is so dynamic and varied came as a great surprise.

It was his wife, Akiko, who wanted to stop at a studio in the Devon village of Drewsteginton. She had seen an article in a Japanese magazine about a local potter who dug his own clay and specialized in clay and wood-ash glazes. "Over the next two years, I sought out 80 potters nationwide. The work was so much better than I ever expected. I was fascinated by the differences in shape, color, ideas."

For 10 years Isaka had been thinking to open a gallery. His original idea was to specialize in painting, but in 1998 that changed. The result? Gallery St Ives in Tokyo's Setagaya Ward, dedicated to familiarizing Japan with contemporary British pottery -- and hopefully placing more than a few pieces in Japanese homes.