Kyo Ware and Kiyomizu Ware: Kyoto's Refined Ceramics

Kyo ware and Kiyomizu ware. Both names contain something everyone has heard: Kyo for Kyoto, and Kiyomizu for its famous temple. Both refer to ceramics born in Kyoto, capital for a thousand years, and both are defined by an aesthetic of miyabi — courtly refinement — that could only have arisen where court culture, tea and painting met so deeply.

Where Bizen ware treasures the contingency of fire and clay, what Kyo ware treasures is precise work directed by human intention. An artist expresses a conceived design on a piece with exact brushwork. The piece is a canvas, a craft object and a distillation of literature all at once. That is the world of Kyo ware.

The History of Kyo and Kiyomizu Ware

Ceramic production in Kyoto goes back to the Heian period, when the capital was established there in 794 — the era that also produced Kyoto's characteristic grid of streets. But what dominated then were imports from China and Korea and work from other regions.

Kyo ware established itself as a region in its own right from around the sixteenth century. Many people associate Kyoto with tea, and it was exactly the rise of tea culture that created demand in the city for finely made tea utensils and drew skilled potters to the capital.

Nonomura Ninsei, father of Kyo ware

The great master who laid the foundation of Kyo ware was Nonomura Ninsei, working in the seventeenth century.

Said to come from Tamba province northwest of Kyoto, Ninsei opened the Omuro kiln before the gate of Ninna-ji temple. His achievement was bringing to Kyoto's until-then plain pottery the revolutionary technique of overglaze painting.

A bisque-fired piece is covered in clear glaze and fired, and then precise motifs are painted over it in red, green, yellow, gold and black and fired again in an overglaze kiln at around 800°C. Through that multiple firing, Ninsei achieved colour of real depth and refined decoration.

Many of Ninsei's surviving works are now designated National Treasures or Important Cultural Properties, and major museums worldwide hold them. At the time, wabi-sabi philosophy was spreading through tea, and Bizen and Shigaraki — which value dialogue with nature and the contingency of fire and clay — were rising. Kyo ware went in the opposite direction, embodying a beauty made deliberately by human hands, through painting.

Ogata Kenzan: painting and pottery fused

Ninsei's most important student was Ogata Kenzan (1663–1743). Kenzan came from the Ogata family, well-known Kyoto textile merchants, and his elder brother was the great Rinpa painter Ogata Korin.

Kenzan's ceramics added to Ninsei's precision a freer, more pictorial expression. His collaborations with Korin — Kenzan forming the piece, Korin painting it — are especially famous, with Rinpa motifs of red and white plum, waves, moon and pine unfolding vividly across the surfaces.

Kenzan's work has been described as bringing painting onto the table. The innovation of dissolving the boundary between craft and painting still looks fresh to a modern eye.

Then in the seventeenth century, production developed along the eastern hills alongside the fashion for tea, flourishing around Gojozaka on the approach to Kiyomizu-dera. That is why it came to be called Kiyomizu ware. Today, ceramics produced in Kyoto generally are called Kyo ware and Kiyomizu ware together.

What Defines Kyo Ware: Giving Form to Miyabi

The range of decorative technique

What Kyo ware is proud of is the richness of its decorative techniques.

• Overglaze painting, iroe and nishikide　Painting motifs in several colours over a fired piece and firing again at low temperature. Layering red, green, yellow, gold and blue produces expression as rich as painting. This is the representative Kyo technique, perfected by Ninsei and Kenzan.
• Sometsuke　Painting motifs in cobalt blue beneath the glaze before firing. The beauty of blue against white porcelain is its character, and it is loved alongside the sometsuke of Arita ware.
• Gold and silver decoration　Using gold and silver on formal pieces. Often found on kaiseki ware and tea utensils, and gilded pieces are especially valued as gifts.
• Shinsha　The vivid red produced by reduction-firing a copper-bearing glaze. The technique was learned from Chinese ceramics, but Kyo artists developed it in their own direction.

Motifs: Japanese classical literature on a piece

The motifs painted on Kyo and Kiyomizu ware are not mere decoration. Japanese classical literature, a view of nature and a sense of season are condensed into them.

• Birds and flowers of the four seasons　Cherry for spring, morning glory for summer, maple for autumn, snow-ring for winter. Motifs reflecting the season give the pleasure of choosing when to use a piece.
• Scenes from waka　Images drawn from Japanese classical literature — the Hyakunin Isshu, the Manyoshu, the Tale of Genji. The more literary background you have, the more deeply the piece rewards you.
• Rinpa design　The motifs established by Ogata Korin and Hon'ami Koetsu — waves, plum, cranes, chrysanthemums by a fence — are still widely used in Kyo ware.
• Geometric motifs　Scrolling vines, shippo interlocking circles, hemp leaf and other traditional Japanese geometric patterns are Kyo staples.

Because it is Kyoto, the most accomplished artists gathered here and went on making through history. That is why Kyo and Kiyomizu ware is characterised less by making the most of the clay than by a fusion of technique, exhausting human skill to build an ideal form.

Kyo Ware and the Way of Tea

Kyoto is where tea culture began and developed. Sen no Rikyu, Takeno Joo, Furuta Oribe: almost everyone who made the history of tea was based in Kyoto, and many tea practitioners supported Kyo and Kiyomizu artists. Out of that came Raku ware, arguably the summit of tea ceramics.

• Raku ware　Hand-built tea bowls made in Kyoto by the potter Chojiro under Sen no Rikyu's direction. As a form of Kyo ware, the Raku house (the fifteenth Raku Kichizaemon) still makes them one at a time.
• Awata ware　A Kyo type made at Awataguchi in Higashiyama, characterised by a finely crazed glaze. In the Edo period it also circulated as a form of the export ceramics called Satsuma ware.
• Ninsei's water jars and tea caddies　The water jars and tea caddies Nonomura Ninsei made are held in the highest regard in the world of tea, and many surviving pieces are designated National Treasures or Important Cultural Properties.

Tea bowls by leading contemporary Kyo artists are likewise valued at the highest level as tea utensils.

Seeing and Buying Kyo Ware in Kyoto

The best place to meet Kyo ware in Kyoto is around Kiyomizuzaka and Gojozaka, the approaches to Kiyomizu-dera. Kilns and galleries continuous since the Edo period line the area, and contemporary studios are scattered through it.

Note, though, that the main street of Kiyomizuzaka carries a good deal of mass-produced goods aimed at tourists. If you want serious work, we recommend specialist galleries in the smaller lanes off the main street, or visiting artists' studios directly.

• Kiyomizu Sannenzaka Museum　A museum specialising in Kyoto crafts of the Meiji and Taisho eras. Alongside cloisonné, lacquer and sculpture, it holds masterworks of Kyo and Kiyomizu ware by modern masters. Ideal for learning what the real standard looks like before buying.
• The kiln streets of Gojozaka and Kiyomizuzaka　Kilns and galleries concentrate along the approach to Kiyomizu-dera. It matters to choose while checking artist names and kiln information.
• Ceramic exhibitions and Kyoto craft fairs　Kyoto holds specialist ceramic selling exhibitions several times a year — a chance to choose while talking directly with the artist.

Nokaze's physical shop in Kyoto also carries work by many artists active in the city. You can check the surface in a way photographs cannot convey, so please stop by when you are in Kyoto.

From Gojozaka and Chawanzaka up to the Kiyomizu Ware Complex in Yamashina, there is also an article that gathers the places to buy pottery in Kyoto area by area, in walking order. Read it alongside this one: where to buy ceramics in Kyoto.

Bringing Kyo Ware Into Daily Life

Kyo and Kiyomizu ware is not craft to look at but pottery to use. To bring the aesthetic of the thousand-year capital onto your table, consider where to begin.

Everyday tea cups

The best entry point is a yunomi. At a reachable price you can own genuine Kyo ware with hand painting on it. Using one at tea time every day creates a moment of feeling the season's motif in ordinary life. Keeping different motifs for different seasons is a pleasant practice too.

Small plates and mukozuke for kaiseki

Kyo ware shows itself best when food is served on it. Bound deeply to Kyoto's kaiseki culture, it has forms and motifs calculated to make a small quantity of food look beautiful.

Acquire one mukozuke — the dish Japanese restaurants use for sashimi and small servings — and plate a Japanese starter on it. A conversation between food and piece begins.

Kyo ware as a gift

Kyo ware is among the most formal gifts in Japan. The Kyoto name, precise painting, the history of a prestigious region. Together they give Kyo and Kiyomizu ware its standing as a special gift. For weddings, anniversaries and gifts to seniors, it is an ideal choice.

Pottery is not merely a household object or a tool for the table. It changes its face little by little the more it is used within daily life, and it records memories along with the giver's intention — a genuinely particular gift. Why not entrust to a piece of pottery what words cannot fully carry?

• Japanese Pottery as a Gift: What to Choose for Whom
• For Gift｜Japanese pottery & culture

Potters Working in Kyoto Today

Kyo ware today has a range of artists who protect the tradition of Ninsei and Kenzan while adding a contemporary sensibility.

In recent years, more younger makers have brought a modern design sense into their work while keeping the tradition of precise overglaze painting. They draw attention from overseas collectors through the internet, and a following has grown that sees Kyo ware not as traditional craft but as contemporary art.

Ishii Natsumi (Ishiimoke)

Working in Kyoto City, and also active under the name Ishiimoke, she makes unpretentious everyday pottery centred on kohiki. Kohiki, where the colour of the clay shows faintly through a white glaze, has a plain and gentle appeal. The forms are simple, but there is play in the line of a rim and the balance of a foot ring, and whatever you serve on them somehow looks right. In collaborations with the painter Kawamura Aiko, motifs suggesting the world of antiques are added, giving the pieces a narrative quality. A soft, approachable body of work carrying the atmosphere of Kyoto.

Kawamura Aiko, painter

A painter based in Kyoto. Inheriting the traditional overglaze technique of Kyo and Kiyomizu ware deeply, she produces fresh, refined pieces that sit quietly alongside contemporary life.

Her appeal lies in outstanding fine brushwork and a modern beauty of colour that makes use of empty space. Motifs expressing the plants and natural scenes of the seasons with something poetic in them keep the scent of refined miyabi while bringing colour to a modern table, Japanese or Western. These are pieces carrying a sensibility like contemporary art, not confined within the frame of Kyoto traditional craft.

TATA pottery studio

TATA pottery studio was born of a partnership between Tanaka Daiki, who forms the pottery, and Tanabe Kei, "the thinking brush," who paints it. Tanaka's forms, easy to use daily and built around beauty through use, carry Tanabe's refined yet slightly retro, endearing painting — pottery that brings colour to ordinary days. Petal-rimmed plates with frilled edges, plump and charming mugs: the forms keep beauty through use while adding touches that lift a table. A bear, a panda, a girl — choosing the picture you like is part of the pleasure.

• Tanaka Daiki

Lo YikSze

From Hong Kong. After moving to Kyoto she was deeply moved by the clear turning of the seasons and the beauty of nature, and continues to make pottery reflecting that breath. Self-taught rather than formally trained, she faces the clay single-mindedly and pursues the beauty through use in which the efforts and memories of earlier makers are held.

Forming pieces in gentle morning light and in the quiet of night is, for her, a moment of ichigo ichie that exists only now. To express the depth and complex texture of nature, she layers five or more glazes on every piece. The colours applied while watching a summer sunset have a rhythm of their own, and she delivers warm pottery that stays close to daily life, breathing in time with all the beauty that colours it — food, flowers, tea.

• Lo YikSze

Choosing a Piece That Carries Miyabi as a Gift

In Japanese gift culture, Kyo and Kiyomizu ware has an exceptional presence. Weddings, sixtieth birthdays, honours, milestones in tea practice. There is a reason hand-painted Kyo ware is chosen for the special moments of a life.

First, Kyo painting carries story and wish. Crane, pine and plum symbolise long life and prosperity; the flowers of the four seasons express gratitude toward nature; Tale of Genji designs stand for cultivation and formality. Choosing a motif to suit the recipient's taste and the meaning of the occasion is where the depth of Japanese gift-giving lies.

As a gift to someone from abroad, Kyo and Kiyomizu ware leaves a strong impression as a distillation of Japanese spiritual culture. Even a single small dish becomes something beyond an ordinary object when the history, technique and story behind it are given alongside it.

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• A Short History of Japanese Ceramics, Jomon to Now
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• Japanese Pottery by Region: A Buyer's Map
• Kyoto Pottery: Where to Buy Ceramics in Kyoto
• Raku Ware: The Hand-Formed Tea Bowl, 15 Generations On
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