Hiroe Swen (b. 1934) was born in Kyoto, Japan, and worked there as a potter after completing a 5 year apprenticeship with master potter H. Hayashi in 1962. In 1968 she married the artist Cornell Swen and moved to Sydney. Two years later the couple moved to 'Bimbimbi', near Queanbeyan NSW, and in 1973 they set up the Pastoral Gallery. She became an Australian in 1974 and lectured at the Canberra Institute of the Arts from 1981 - 1999. She is known as one of the foremost ceramic artists, and is an exponent of the modernist movement in Japanese ceramics, owing little to the Anglo-Oriental tradition. Specialising in one-off coil-built vessel forms that explore the human conditions, she gives her pieces Australiain names and stamps her work with both Australian and Japanese monograms, as well as signing some works with her full name.