Tajimi

Tajimi is the heart of Mino ware, the place that produced the white of Shino and the green of Oribe. A large share of Japan's tableware still comes from this area.

What sits here is the work of a maker with a studio in Tajimi. Pure white plates worked out to suit any dish, and a bronze line that began as a request from a neighborhood izakaya. A seven-sun plate with the hand-carving still showing, a five-sun plate in relief, tea cups shaped like canneles, and chopstick rests. Mix the white and the bronze on one table and a quiet rhythm appears.

Mino ware is not the name of a single style but a collective term for what is fired across this area. Within it, a thick feldspar glaze that yields a citrus-peel white came to be called Shino, and copper-green Oribe. Makers today use the local clay and kilns while shaping their own forms rather than following a style. For the spread of the region, see pottery from Tajimi.