Collection: Shuhari Collection

A Collaborative Work with Nishihara Akira

Some collaborations are arranged. This one was recognised.

The Shuhari Collection is a meeting of two practices that were, without knowing it, searching for each other. Nishihara Akira works in Arita, Japan — a master ceramicist whose forms are built on decades of precision, restraint, and the quiet discipline of removing everything unnecessary. John Mac works in France, with saggar firing: loading a sealed kiln with wood chips, copper wire, dried flowers, pine cones, and metal oxides, then surrendering the outcome entirely to the fire.

What John had long been searching for were forms open enough to receive that surrender without resistance. Akira's forms were exactly that. They were waiting for exactly this.

Each piece in this collection begins in Akira's studio in Arita — thrown on the wheel, shaped by a lifetime of mastery. The forms travel to France and enter John's saggar kiln. The kiln is sealed. The fire takes over. What emerges carries both makers: his precision making room for the fire; the fire revealing what was always latent in his form.

The collection takes its name from 守破離 — Shu Ha Ri — the Japanese philosophy of mastery through preservation, breaking, and departure. Each piece is unrepeatable. Each one is a record of two makers, two traditions, and one moment of transformation that could not be planned, only allowed.

This collection is presented at Maison & Objet, Paris, September 2026.