Ichigo Ichie: One Encounter, Once in a Lifetime

Mass-produced tableware is the same wherever you buy it. The same shape, the same colour, the same weight. Ten plates on a shelf are identical to the millimetre, and it makes no difference which you take. That is the modern normal, produced by the precision and efficiency of manufacturing. Handmade pottery is fundamentally different. Even when the same artist uses the same clay and the same glaze and fires in the same kiln, no two pieces come out alike.

There is the subtle individuality of the clay, the path the glaze took as it ran, the surface the flame carved. And above all, there are the traces left by the artist's hands at each particular moment. That is the fundamental difference between mass production and handmade pottery. A handmade piece is an encounter that exists only once in the world. In Japan, that encounter is called ichigo ichie.

What Ichigo Ichie Means

A philosophy of encounter raised by the way of tea

The phrase ichigo ichie spread from the spirit of tea set out by the nineteenth-century tea master Ii Naosuke in his book Chanoyu Ichie Shu. In a tea gathering, host and guest alike should give themselves entirely, holding the awareness that this particular gathering happens only once in a lifetime. The time you share now, in this place, with these people, will never be repeated. That is precisely why you give everything to the moment.

In the world of tea, the choice of utensils is bound up with this philosophy. Tea bowls and other utensils are each pieces into which an artist has poured themselves, and they are chosen with the season and the relationship with the guest in mind. Use the same tea bowl in a different season and it looks different. The yohen colours seen in morning light and the same bowl lit at dusk tell entirely separate stories.

In the world of wabi-cha that Sen no Rikyu pursued, the value of a tea bowl lay not in monetary worth but in the once-only nature of its life. Among the bowls known as meibutsu, no two carry the same face, and that uniqueness was the highest value a piece could hold in tea. The bowls made by the first Chojiro of Raku ware have been carefully passed down to the present precisely as pieces that will never be born again.

The spirit of ichigo ichie lives outside the tea room as well. The act of choosing handmade pottery is itself a practice of it. The piece that stood on that shop's shelf on that day, at that moment. That encounter can never be recreated. Because even if the artist wedges the same clay the same way, forms the same shape and loads the same kiln, exactly the same piece will not appear.

Developing out of the history of tea, the spirit of wabi-sabi held within Japanese ceramics is explained in detail in the guide below.

• Reading Wabi-Sabi in a Single Bowl

Knowing that this moment will not come again

We make a great many choices in daily life. Ingredients at the supermarket, clothes, furniture. Most of them can be replaced with something similar. An encounter with handmade pottery is different. The piece in front of you exists only in this moment, and no two carry the same markings.

The feeling resembles what happens on a journey. The people you met, the food you ate, the view you saw. They stay in memory, but exactly that moment never comes round again. When you pick up a handmade piece, the sense that you met it at this particular moment has the same richness as the memory of a trip.

When you choose a piece holding the awareness that this moment will not come again, your eye naturally sharpens. Does this shape really suit my life? Will this colour still hold up after seeing it every day? Is this weight easy to use? What occasions do I want to use it for? Beyond those carefully accumulated questions comes a firm sense of "this is the one." That is the real pleasure of encountering handmade pottery.

Why Every Handmade Piece Differs

Handmade pottery is fundamentally unlike mass production because human hands and natural forces are deeply involved in how it is made. From the clay onward — forming, glazing, firing — chance and individuality inhabit every stage.

Clay: even one region's clay is not uniform

The clay that a piece is made from differs subtly in composition depending on where it was dug. Even within one region, clay from a deep seam and clay from a shallow one carry different amounts of iron and silica. And even when one kiln buys clay from the same region, the character of the clay shifts slightly with the year and the season it was dug.

Artists sense those differences from long experience and adjust the water and the wedging according to the state of the clay. But however much experience they build, the individuality of a natural material can never be made completely uniform. That individuality — which cannot be levelled out — connects directly to the richness of a piece's surface.

The clay of Shigaraki, for instance, famous through Shigaraki ware, is coarse and highly refractory, and natural ash glaze melts beautifully across it during firing. But even within Shigaraki clay, a difference in particle size or iron content changes the finished texture. One piece comes out with a reddish surface, another with a calm greyish tone. That is the difference the clay itself speaks.

Some potters dig clay from mountains and paddy fields themselves, refine it by levigation, and blend a clay body no one else has. Clay made that way carries a memory of place and nature that exists only in that artist's work. Even artists using commercially blended clay often mix in clay from their own region to build a body of their own. Either way, as long as the clay itself has individuality, the same piece cannot be born twice.

Liquid follows gravity: the chance in a glaze

Glaze is the material applied to the surface of a piece and vitrified in the kiln. Compounded from feldspar, limestone and ash, it melts during firing to produce colour, texture and gloss. When liquid glaze is applied, the slightest difference in thickness or in how it runs changes the fired surface dramatically.

Glaze is a liquid, so it follows gravity. Dip a piece held upright and the upper part goes thin while glaze pools toward the bottom. How it runs depends on the form of the piece, the density of the glaze, the angle and duration of the dip, and how quickly the artist lifts it out. However carefully the same steps are repeated, a liquid never flows in exactly the same way twice.

Ash glaze and straw-ash glaze show this most strongly, and the way the glaze melts and runs during firing becomes the surface itself. The raised bead where a drip of glaze gathered and set — the yudamari — is a form of beauty mass production can never produce. And when several glazes are layered, where their boundaries react and what colour appears is unknown until the kiln is opened.

On white-surfaced pieces such as Shino or kohiki, unevenness in glaze thickness produces what is called keshiki. Where the glaze pools thick it looks white and soft; where it runs thin it is translucent and the clay colour shows through. That gradation differs piece by piece even with the same artist and the same technique. This beauty born of chance is the essence of what keeps collectors of handmade pottery searching for years.

For more on the appeal of keshiki in Japanese ceramics, please also see the guide below.

• Keshiki: How to Read the 'Landscape' on a Pot

Firing, which can never be fully controlled

Modern electric kilns control temperature precisely and hold deviation from the set point to a minimum. But nowhere inside a kiln is uniform. There is a temperature difference between places near the heat source and places far from it, and the result changes with how pieces are stacked and how the kiln is packed.

In a wood kiln or a climbing kiln, that uncertainty grows much larger. The type of wood, the temperature and humidity on the day, the experience and instinct of the person stoking. All of it affects the outcome. Judging temperature from the colour and force of the flame while the firing continues is highly skilled work — and even so, nothing inside a kiln can be entirely controlled.

Artists who use an anagama stoke for several days. Throughout, ash swirls inside and settles on the pieces. Melted ash that fuses to a piece like glaze — natural glaze — is a surface that appears only on the pieces of that kiln, that firing, that place. Nor can anyone say before the firing where the hiiro flashing the flame carves will appear, or in what colour.

Many pieces do not come out of the kiln as the artist intended. Whether that counts as a failure or as a gift from the kiln depends on each artist's philosophy — but in either case a kiln is a living thing, a place where something beyond human intent intervenes. That uncertainty is what gives handmade pottery its character as a piece met by fate.

Throwing rings, fingerprints, brush marks: the artist's hand

The most direct human trace left in a handmade piece is the mark of the artist's own hands. When a piece is thrown on the wheel, the movement of the fingertips touching the clay stays on the surface. These are the throwing rings. Cut in concentric circles, they can be seen inside and outside a piece, and they tell you how fast and how firmly the clay was drawn up.

A piece made by hand-building keeps the marks of clay pressed out and coiled up with the fingers. The uneven thickness and the slight distortion of the form are exactly the proof that human hands made it. In large hand-built work — a Shigaraki jar, a Mashiko flower container — you can feel the weight of the hours or days the artist spent with it.

In hakeme, the technique of applying white slip to a piece, the marks of a broad brush swept across in one motion stay on the surface. The force, direction and width of those brush marks are where each artist's character shows. Even within hakeme, a stroke pulled strongly in one go and a stroke layered slowly and carefully produce entirely different surfaces. Koishiwara hakeme is forceful and full of movement; kohiki hakeme is soft and quiet.

These traces simply do not exist in mass production. The surface of a moulded piece is levelled and the marks of hands are removed. But in handmade pottery, the time the artist spent facing that piece is sealed in as it was. When you pick a piece up and touch its surface, your fingertips overlap the place the artist's fingertips touched.

The Moment You Find the Piece and Feel "This Is It"

An encounter with a piece

It was an autumn afternoon. In a small gallery in Kyoto, I was slowly looking over the pieces set out on the shelves. A kohiki rice bowl, a small celadon dish, an iron-glazed lipped bowl. All of them carefully made, all of them good. But picking them up, the feeling of "this is it" did not come.

Then, at the end of a shelf, there was one small bowl. Ki-Seto, in stoneware, slightly warped, its glaze run gathered to one side. Picking it up, it was lighter than expected and settled into my hand as though drawn there. The colour of the clay showing through beneath the glaze glowed warmly in the light of an autumn evening. At one point only there was a small raised bead where the glaze had pooled and set. Resting a thumb on it, it fitted exactly.

"This one goes on the kitchen windowsill," I thought. In the morning, with a mandarin or an apple in it. In that moment, how the bowl would be used came into clear view. That is the feeling of "this is it."

Encounters with handmade pottery often carry a moment like that, when you can see where the story goes. The instant you pick a piece up, what food it will hold on your table and on what kind of morning you will reach for it. That future story is held in the surface of the piece.

Choosing by connection rather than comparison

When choosing handmade pottery, the usual purchasing behaviour of comparing options and picking the best does not work well. Rather than comparing which piece is superior, what matters is sensing which piece settles into your life as it is now.

There is a word, en — connection. The sense that meetings with people, and with objects, happen only because a connection exists is deeply rooted in Japanese culture. Handmade pottery is chosen through exactly that connection. However objectively beautiful a piece may be, if it does not come alive within your own life, perhaps the connection was not there.

Conversely, if a piece that looks plain at first brings a concrete picture of it in your kitchen, on your table, at your window, that is a connection. Not price, not the artist's reputation, not the region, but the pure sense of whether you want to live with this piece becomes the standard for choosing.

People rarely regret buying handmade pottery. What was chosen by connection turns, the longer you use it, into the conviction that it really was the right one. And that is also a matter of trusting your own sensibility through the encounter.

The Pleasure of Choosing Handmade Pottery

Choosing after learning the artist's background

Handmade pottery is made by a human being. Knowing where an artist works and what they are reaching for deepens your relationship with the piece.

Suppose an artist works in the harsh nature of Hokkaido, committed to local clay. The climate of that place, the colour of the clay they dug, and the turning of the seasons they felt there. All of it affects the work. Pick up a piece knowing that background and the amount the piece says to you is different. When you find yourself thinking "this bluish colour may be like a northern winter sky," the piece is no longer simply tableware — it carries the story of a place, a time, a person.

Knowing an artist's career and their philosophy of making also enriches the choice. Was this artist born into a potter's family, touching clay from childhood? Or did they move across from an entirely different job and open a kiln in their forties? That background changes what is held in the work, even within the same region.

Nokaze introduces each artist's profile and the background of their making in detail. Which region, what clay, and what they are reaching for. Choosing after reading that produces the conviction that you want to use this artist's work. Knowing the artist leads to understanding the piece more deeply, and it enriches the daily experience of using it.

Choosing after understanding regions, clay and glaze

Japan has many ceramic regions: Shigaraki, Bizen, Hagi, Arita, Karatsu, Mashiko, Kasama, Tokoname, Echizen, Tamba. Each has its own clay, its traditional techniques and its own aesthetic. Knowing the differences widens the field of view enormously.

Porcelain, for instance — white, hard and non-absorbent — and stoneware, plain and warm, differ in use and in which food suits them. Porcelain shows the colour of a soup beautifully and suits sharply presented dishes. Stoneware holds heat and its warmth suits simmered dishes and Japanese food. Neither is superior; how you choose depends on what you want from your own table.

With glaze, too, simply knowing the basics changes how you look: celadon glaze for a bluish beauty, amber glaze for warm brown tones, white matte for a soft whiteness, iron glaze for the restraint of deep black and brown. Building up a little knowledge of regions, clay and glaze while you choose is itself a rich journey of learning.

As your knowledge grows, time in a gallery or at a craft market becomes richer. The more often you notice that "this whiteness is the softness of kohiki" or that "this pattern of crazing is characteristic of Hagi ware," the deeper your conversation with a piece becomes. And a piece you feel a connection to while holding that knowledge carries an even richer meaning in the encounter.

For the way material changes a ceramic piece, please read the guide below as well and enjoy choosing with that knowledge in hand.

• Stoneware vs Porcelain: How to Tell Them Apart

Living With a One-of-a-Kind Piece

Chipped or broken: the option of kintsugi

However carefully you use handmade pottery, sooner or later something chips or cracks. With mass production you simply buy the same thing again. With a one-of-a-kind piece, the same thing does not exist. And here Japan has a beautiful culture of repair called kintsugi.

Kintsugi joins chips and breaks with lacquer and finishes the seam in gold or silver powder. The repaired area is not hidden; it becomes part of the piece's surface as a line of gold. The idea that damage becomes history goes straight to the heart of the Japanese aesthetic.

A piece that has been through kintsugi carries a different face from before. How it was chipped, the decision to repair it, the time a craftsperson's hands spent on it. All of it accumulates as the story of the piece. Each time you pick it up and trace that gold line, the memory returns — dropping it from a shelf that day, noticing it on returning from a trip. That is proof the piece has stopped being a mere tool and become something you have lived alongside.

You can learn kintsugi yourself or commission a specialist. Classes have grown more common in recent years, and weekend sessions are widely available. A piece you have repaired with your own hands draws you in further still. Rather than discarding what has chipped, repair it and keep using it. That simple choice shifts your relationship with a piece from consumption to coexistence.

Kintsugi is also one answer to today's disposable culture. Keep what matters and use it for a long time. Express respect for an object by repairing it. Through the way you live with pottery, that stance becomes an opportunity to re-examine the values of your whole life.

Using it for years, with the sense of nurturing it

Most handmade pottery grows through use. Stoneware in particular absorbs water, so oils and the colour of food soak in as you keep using it and depth appears in the surface. This is described as colour entering the crazing, and Japan has a culture of appreciating it as evidence of long use.

Kohiki shows that change most clearly. A piece that was pure white at first gradually takes colour and becomes a piece that is yours alone. That change is also a record of what its owner ate. What was served in it, what dishes it accompanied. Time settles quietly into the surface. Even two kohiki pieces look entirely different after ten years and after six months.

To live with a piece in the spirit of nurturing it, careful basic maintenance matters. At the outset, simmering it in rice-rinsing water as medome prevents stains soaking in through the crazing. But for pieces where you deliberately want the staining, medome is sometimes skipped. Asking the artist or the shop is the reliable route.

Wash soon after use and dry thoroughly before storing. Whether microwave and dishwasher use is acceptable varies with the artist and the character of the region, so check when you buy. Stoneware generally tends to be vulnerable to sudden temperature change. And when stacking pieces for storage, a cloth or sheet of paper between them prevents scratching.

A piece used for many years has a depth that no new piece has — the depth of accumulated time and memory. Every time you take it from the shelf, the memories of the table around it return. A meal shared with someone, a seasonal dish, an unremarkable morning. A special dinner with someone who matters. Handmade pottery also holds the memory of a life.

And when you pass a long-used piece on to someone, a story leading to a new owner is added to it. A one-of-a-kind piece can move from one family to another, accumulating each household's memories, and go on living through time. That is a life of its own, and one mass production can never have.

Meeting a Piece Is Like Meeting a Person

An encounter with handmade pottery is like a connection with a person. Meeting in the same era, in the same place, at the same moment. That accumulation of chance creates the connection. A handmade piece, too, appears before you as one piece born in the fire, after a particular artist faced a particular clay for a particular stretch of time.

The convenience and rationality of mass production are indispensable to modern life. But what handmade pottery gives is a richness on a different axis from convenience and rationality. When you know that the mug you pour coffee into every morning was wedged from mountain clay by a particular artist. When you know that the way the glaze ran on the small bowl holding tonight's simmered dish came from the flame in the kiln that day. Every time you pick up the piece, you connect to the story behind it.

Choosing pottery in the spirit of ichigo ichie means treating as important the fact that you met this piece at this moment. Not comparing to pick the best, but keeping the piece you felt a connection to. Then living with it for years, repairing it when it chips, using it and letting it grow. That kind of relationship teaches a new meaning for owning things.

Choosing pottery is also a way of facing your own sensibility. Asking why you were drawn to this piece leads to asking what kind of life you actually value. Trusting and sharpening your own sensibility through handmade pottery brings a richness that goes beyond the simple act of choosing.

The piece you pick up today is the only one of its kind in the world. Your fingertips overlap the same clay the artist's hands touched. Your eyes take in the surface the kiln's flame produced. And the days you spend with that piece will, in time, become part of your own story.

Related Guides

More on the culture and history of Japanese ceramics

• Japanese Ceramics: The Complete Guide for Beginners
• A Short History of Japanese Ceramics, Jomon to Now
• Reading Wabi-Sabi in a Single Bowl
• Wabi-Sabi in Ceramics: What It Actually Means
• Kintsugi: How to Repair Pottery With Gold (and Why)
• Pottery That 'Grows': How Ceramics Change With Use
• Keshiki: How to Read the 'Landscape' on a Pot

More on Japan's pottery regions

• Japanese Pottery by Region: A Buyer's Map
• Arita Ware: Japan's First Porcelain, 400 Years On
• Bizen Ware: Pottery With No Glaze at All
• Kyo Ware and Kiyomizu Ware: Kyoto's Refined Ceramics
• Shigaraki Ware: Why Its Clay Sparkles After 1,200 Years
• Mashiko Pottery: Where Japanese Folk Craft Still Lives
• Hagi Ware: The Tea Bowl That Changes Colour as You Use It
• Kutani Ware: Japan's Boldest Ceramic Painting
• Bizen vs Hagi: Two Opposite Ideas of Wabi-Sabi
• Tokoname Kyusu: Why Red Clay Makes Tea Taste Better
• Raku Ware: The Hand-Formed Tea Bowl, 15 Generations On
• Iga Ware: Fire, Ash and the Beauty of Rough Clay
• Karatsu Ware: Kyushu's Rough, Tea-Loved Pottery
• Seto Ware: The Kiln Town That Named Japanese Pottery
• Hasami Ware: Everyday Japanese Porcelain from Nagasaki
• Echizen Ware: The Plainest of the Six Ancient Kilns
• Kasama Ware: Japan's Most Free-Spirited Pottery Town
• Tamba Ware Guide: Japan's 800-Year Ash-Glazed Pottery
• Tobe Ware: Shikoku's Thick, Everyday Blue Porcelain
• Mino Ware Guide: Oribe, Shino and Japan's Biggest Kiln
• Tajimi: Where Contemporary Mino Ceramics Are Made

How to choose Japanese ceramics

• Why Japanese Pottery Is Worth Buying (and Keeping)
• Stoneware vs Porcelain: How to Tell Them Apart
• Earthenware, Stoneware, Porcelain: The Real Differences

How to buy Japanese ceramics

• Buying Japanese Pottery Online: What to Check First
• New Arrivals

Pieces available at Nokaze

• Japanese Tea Set | Teapots, Yunomi Cups & Matcha Bowls