Ceramic artist Swanica Ligtenberg returned from her native Holland in early January with a new sense of purpose. She no longer felt an outsider in a family of goldsmiths and silversmiths, because in speaking with her uncle — still creatively active at age 91 — she realized that the roots of his and her grandfather's craft were also in her own.
"He works with metal, I work with clay. We both carve and etch into surfaces, and one of my teapots is inspired by one made by my grandfather in the Art Deco period of the 1920s. Just as the art of Kamakura-bori wood carving and lacquerware is handed down through the generations, I now have a real sense of heritage, as if I have come full circle."
There are circles on one of the three large plates that stand in the window of her living room in Kamakura. "Circles of Life" received a Judges' Commendation Award in the Mashiko Ceramics Competition of 2008, and was then exhibited in the Mashiko Museum of Ceramics Arts for two months.