Unglazed Stoneware

Pieces fired without any glaze at all, until the clay itself becomes dense. Everything on the surface was made by fire and ash over several days in the kiln.

Ash falls where the flame carried it and melts into glass at the shoulder. Where straw was wrapped against the body, red lines run in ways the potter cannot fully predict. The kiln does half the work, so the same landscape never appears twice. And from the day it arrives it keeps shifting colour, slowly, for as long as you use it.

Yakishime means fired to density. At around 1,300C the clay body itself closes up, so an unglazed piece holds liquid without any glaze. The green pooling is natural ash glaze, ash that fell and melted. The red lines are hidasuki, left where rice straw touched the clay. Season a new piece once and the sheen comes up within months.