Crackle Glaze (Kannyu)

Crazing is the fine web of cracks that opens in a glaze because the glaze and the clay beneath it shrink at different rates. It is not a break. It is a look the piece already has when it comes out of the kiln.

A glaze fired to split into wide plates, like ice breaking. Thin lines spreading like netting across a celadon surface. Even with the same glaze, how the flame reached the piece and how thickly the glaze was laid change the way it opens, so no two of them carry the same surface.

It does not stop while you use it. The colour of tea and food seeps a little at a time into the lines, and marks you could not see at first begin to surface.

Whether you read that as staining or as a record of the meals the piece has held changes how you live with it. We have written up what crazing is. How to care for it is something each maker sees differently, so please follow the notes on each product page.