Japanese Pottery Articles
Regions and kilns, techniques, how to choose and care for your pieces. Articles to start your journey into Japanese pottery.
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Why Hagi Ware Changes Color With Use
Why Hagi ware changes color as you use it: how soft clay and crazing take in tea and coffee, how glaze colo...
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Bizen Ware Marks: Reading Kiln Seals and Signatures
How to read the marks on Bizen ware: old kiln marks from the shared great kilns of Imbe, modern stamped sea...
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Japanese Pottery Souvenirs: What to Buy and Where to Find It
The best Japanese pottery souvenirs are small: sake cups, tiny plates, chopstick rests and teacups. What to...
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How to Tell If Japanese Pottery Is Handmade
Is that piece of Japanese pottery really handmade? Where to look and what each sign means: the foot ring an...
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Ichiju Sansai: Japanese Tableware for One Soup and Three Dishes
Ichiju sansai, one soup and three dishes, is the everyday shape of a Japanese meal. Which piece each part n...
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Before First Use: Preparing Unglazed and Crackled Japanese Pottery
Which Japanese pottery needs preparing before first use and which does not, how to soak unglazed stoneware ...
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Tomobako: What the Wooden Box Tells You About Japanese Pottery
A tomobako is the wooden box an artisan signs for one piece of pottery. How to read the lid, the signature ...
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How to Ship Pottery Home From Japan Without Breaking It
Bought pottery in Japan? How to get it home in one piece: what to carry on, what to check, how to wrap cups...
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Japanese Handleless Cups and Tumblers: How to Choose by Size and Clay
A Japanese handleless cup, called a free cup in Japan, covers green tea and coffee, cold barley tea, beer a...
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Japanese Pottery Christmas Gifts: One-of-a-Kind Artisan Pieces for Every Day
Choose Japanese pottery as a Christmas gift, and unlike consumables or ornaments, it is used at the table e...
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Yachimun Buying Guide: Choosing Okinawan Pottery by Shape and Studio
Yachimun is the Okinawan word for pottery. Starting from where the names come from, why "yakimono" became "...
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Shigaraki Ware Buying Guide: Choose by Artisan and Clay
Shigaraki is known for its tanuki figures, but this Six Ancient Kilns town also fires a great deal of every...
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What to Give Someone Who Has Everything: A Piece That Gets Used
The person who has everything is not short of things, only of things they would notice. Consumables run out...
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Medium Plates: Five Sun or Six, and What Each One Does
Five and six sun are the sizes that come out most often in Japanese tableware. They work as side plates, ho...
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Square and Oblong Plates: Why Straight Edges Work at the Table
Put one square plate on a table of nothing but round ones and the outline sharpens. Square and oblong plate...
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Mamezara and Small Plates: Sizes and What to Serve
The Japanese table is built not from one large plate but from several small ones lined up together. Here we...
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Microwave and Dishwasher Safe Japanese Pottery: 73 Makers Answer
Can pottery by an individual maker go in the microwave? Across the 73 makers nokaze carries, 44% say yes to...
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Large Japanese Plates: Choosing Size, Shape and Depth from Seven Sun
Past seven sun, a plate becomes one you buy after deciding what will go on it. One sun is about 3.03cm. Sev...
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Where to Buy Pottery in Kyoto: Gojozaka, Kiyomizu & Online
Kyoto has no pottery village of the kind Arita or Shigaraki has. No clay is dug here either. And yet it has...
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Japanese Housewarming Gifts: What Lands Well, and What to Avoid
The most common mistake with a housewarming gift is taking away space. Someone who has just moved in is sti...
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Japanese Stoneware Care: What Porcelain Never Needs
Care differs between stoneware and porcelain for exactly one reason: whether the body absorbs water. Stonew...
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How to Choose a Donabe | Size, Glaze, First Use and Care
A donabe keeps cooking for about a minute after it comes off the flame. That slowness draws the sweetness o...
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How to Choose a Matcha Bowl | Size, Shape and Region
A matcha bowl is whisked in and drunk from. The standard is 11 to 13cm across and 7 to 9cm tall, and those ...
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Japanese Pottery: The Complete Guide
From Arita porcelain to Bizen stoneware and Raku tea bowls — japanese ceramics carry over 10,000 years of c...
