In 1921, young Japanese potter Shōji Hamada (1894 -1978) travelled with his friend Bernard Leach to the village of Ditchling in East Sussex. The pair journeyed from St Ives, where they had set up their acclaimed pottery with a traditional Japanese climbing kiln – the first noborigama to be built in the West; but it was the art and craft community in Ditchling that really struck a chord with Hamada. Shōji Hamada: A Japanese Potter in Ditchling captures a key…