When I arrived at the workshop of Setsuko Oshiro in August, the sky was a clear blue and the heat like the inside of a kiln, but there were storm clouds gathering, dark thunderheads over the East China Sea.

Sheltering from the blistering sun under a trellis of bengaru yahazu, a dazzling violet flower easily mistaken for bougainvillea or allamanda, Oshiro, a voluble woman of slight but muscular build, stepped out to greet me. We stood for a moment outside the Okinawan restaurant owned by Oshiro and run by her daughter, an eatery right next to her Gallery Sakana.

A female potter, a rare thing in the Okinawan ceramic world, Oshiro studied and worked as an apprentice in Tsuboya, a district of Naha that is associated with stone and earthenware of the same name. She opened her present gallery 20 years ago in the village of Ihara on the southern coast of Okinawa's main island. Adding to Oshiro's rarity as a female potter in Okinawa is the fact that she specializes almost exclusively in the creation of shīsā, the guardian lion-dog figures that have come, more perhaps than anything, to symbolize Okinawa. Commonly placed on rooftops, where they protect homes from fire, they are also found on gateposts and the steps to public buildings and shrines.