TATA pottery studio | The Charming Kyoto Porcelain Two People Make Together

One person shapes the pot. Another paints it. TATA pottery studio is a unit built from exactly those two people.

Daiki Tanaka, a ceramic artist, does the forming. Katsura Tanabe, a painter, does the decoration. In a craft where one maker usually carries a piece from start to finish, very few studios split the work in two.

Line the pieces up and you can see that structure on the surface. The forms are remarkably quiet; the painting is remarkably free. On white porcelain, a cat sleeps, a bear wears a scarf, and a girl in a red dress carries an armful of flowers.

Two people, one piece

TATA pottery studio describes its aim like this.

"We pursue pieces that are easy to use and easy to grow attached to."

Easy to use, and easy to love. Those two things are handled by two different people. Ease of use lives in the form. The thickness that sits well in the hand, how the pieces stack, how the rim meets your lip. That is Tanaka's work.

Attachment lives in the painting. The cat that meets your eye when you open the cupboard. The bear that is there every morning. When the only reason you need for choosing a piece is that you like it, that comes from the decoration.

Because the work is divided, neither side has to be compromised. That is the point of the split.

Daiki Tanaka's forming: moulds, the wheel, and restraint

Tanaka forms with moulds and the potter's wheel. In his own words, the work is "simple, but it reveals its qualities the more you use it."

Take the forms on their own and they really are almost plain. Round plates, rectangular plates, mugs. No decorative protrusions, no exaggerated distortion.

Look closer, though, and the details are doing the work. Plate rims ripple in fine waves, with ribs running outward like spokes. Some mugs are faceted into angles; others swell into soft curves. When light hits them, that relief casts faint shadows across the white body. The surface already has expression before any painting arrives.

And a single line of iron-brown runs around every rim. That thin line tightens the outline of the white porcelain and frames the painting inside it like a picture. As the article on rokuro explains, a great deal is decided at the forming stage — the ground that makes the painting sing is finished before the brush ever touches it.

Katsura Tanabe's painting: still working at a century-old Higashiyama kiln

Katsura Tanabe, who handles the decoration, still works as a painter at a kiln in Higashiyama, Kyoto, that has been running for more than a hundred years.

Higashiyama is the heart of Kyo ware and Kiyomizu ware. Kilns crowd the slope running from Gojozaka up towards Kiyomizu-dera, and painters there have long existed as a separate, independent trade. Kyoto pottery has always been built on division of labour. It is no accident that a studio working this way came out of Kyoto.

Look at a finished piece and you can see the technique splitting into two layers.

The blue-only drawing of sometsuke builds the skeleton, and uwa-etsuke lays colour on top of it. Cobalt changes colour between the raw state and the fired one, so the painter cannot see the finished result while working. The pigment itself is covered in the article on gosu.

The glaze matters just as much. TATA pottery studio writes that "we are particular about the tone of the glaze, blending it specially so that the painting stands out." White porcelain is naturally a slightly cold, bluish white. Soften it a little and the reds and yellows laid over it stop sinking. What the guide to glazes covers applies directly to how the painting reads.

Porcelain and stoneware: two series

TATA pottery studio makes both a porcelain series and a stoneware series, and says the two "give different impressions, offering a range of styles to suit different tastes."

They are different from the raw material up.

The differences are set out in the articles on porcelain and stoneware. Choose by the painting, or choose by the feel in your hand. Having two doors into the work of a single maker is a luxury of this studio.

What is actually painted

The motifs fall into three groups.

• Animals　Cats, dogs, bears, rabbits, pandas — sleeping, clutching bamboo, or wrapped in a scarf
• Girls　In wide, sweeping dresses, holding flowers or a cup
• Plants　Camellias, small blossoms, arabesque, scattered around the animals and figures without filling the empty ground

What makes this interesting is that none of it belongs to the traditional repertoire of Japanese tableware. These are a different lineage from the auspicious motifs covered in Japanese pottery patterns. And yet they sit on the pieces without friction.

The reason is in the line. Outline in a single stroke of blue, then place colour as flat areas. That method is exactly the tradition of underglaze blue and overglaze enamel; only the subject placed inside it is modern. Old technique, new subject — which is why it never turns saccharine.

Even within "girls", one stands on a check ground, another sits among camellias, another holds a cup. Because every piece is painted by hand, the energy of the line and the placement shift from one to the next.

Using them day to day

The painting is the point, so the rule for plating is clear.

Where the painting sits in the well of a plate, do not bury it under food. Leave the centre open and push the food to one side. A single Japanese sweet, a few slices of fruit, one piece of morning toast. That alone keeps the painting inside its frame.

Pieces patterned only around the rim, on the other hand, can be filled completely. Rectangular plates take grilled fish or a spread of small dishes; the round fluted plates work as side plates. Both earn their place every day.

Pair a cup with a small plate and you get two paintings at once. A cat on the cup, a girl on the saucer. Deciding the combination yourself is only possible because each piece is different. The TATA pottery studio collection lets you compare them motif by motif.

Caring for TATA pottery studio pieces

These are porcelain, so sealing is not needed. The enamel does sit on top of the glaze, though, so avoid metal scourers and abrasive cleansers. A soft sponge is more than enough.

No gold is used, so whether a piece is microwave-safe depends on the item. If you are unsure, the practical basics are covered in caring for Japanese ceramics.

Related reading

Kyoto ceramics

• Kyo Ware and Kiyomizu Ware: Kyoto's Refined Ceramics
• Kyoto Pottery: Where to Buy Ceramics in Kyoto
• Kyoto Pottery Expo 2026: The 50th Kiyomizu Ware Fair

Painting techniques

• Sometsuke: Blue and White Porcelain, Explained
• Uwa-etsuke: How Overglaze Enamel Painting Works
• Shita-etsuke: Underglaze Painting and Why It Never Fades
• Japanese Pottery Patterns: What the Motifs Actually Mean

Material and form

• Japanese Porcelain: Made from Stone, Not Clay
• Japanese Stoneware: Born From Clay, Grown Through Use
• Rokuro: How a Pot Is Thrown on the Wheel
• Japanese Ceramic Mugs: Why Handmade Changes Your Coffee