40. Hitomi Hosono ​細野仁美

Hitomi Hosono was born in Gifu Prefecture in 1978 and studied at Kanazawa College of Art. After graduation, she went to Denmark to study design, especially of mass-produced ceramic pottery. However, she found that she was more than a designer transferring a design to be made rather than creating it herself. To that end, she studied pottery at the Royal College of Art in London. While studying there in 2008, Hitomi spent 6 weeks at the Wedgwood factory as an intern, and nine years later, in 2017 she was selected by Wedgwood as the company's first-ever artist-in-residence. Wedgwood has since put into production a special Hitomi Hosono Collection based on the famous jasper cameo series with decorations from classical antiquity, developed by Wedgwood founder Josiah Wedgwood. Hitomi Hosono's porcelain vases and other works of art are renowned for the unparalleled technique with which she manages to apply the smallest details of her intricate botanical designs to bowls and vases. Each leaf is carefully sculpted in a mold and slowly applied to a hand-cast base. Hosono Hitomi's art can be defined as a bridge between British porcelain techniques and Japanese attention to detail, and her work is therefore highly regarded by ceramics enthusiasts in England, Japan and elsewhere.  Hosono Hitomi has participated in many group exhibitions in Japan and Europe and won multiple awards in Japan and London (including the Perrier Jouet Prize). She is represented at the Victoria and Albert Museum, the Oriental Museum, Durham University, and the Aberdeen Art Gallery & Museum.