When feminist ceramicist Matsuda Yuriko was a student at the City University of Fine Arts in Kyoto in the 1960s, women weren’t allowed to work the pottery wheel or fire the kiln. She stuck to ceramics in spite of this, and developed a signature modeling style that might make some of her classmates wish they’d never touched a wheel themselves. Instead of the usual method, she molds her clay into one-inch bands that she then arranges into the shape of a bowl. These bands serve as her basic unit of design, as each is devoted to a theme: a gaping mouth, a woman’s leg, or as in this case, a bold curved swath of color occasionally dappled with cheeky yellow polka dots. While her painting technique is hardly revolutionary—it employs a traditional Japanese color palette and an enameling method not unlike that used by Ming Chinese painters five or more centuries before—Yuriko's eclectic designs still aren’t quite ready for teatime.