Bizen

Bizen uses no glaze at all. Everything you see on the surface was made by fire, ash and straw inside a kiln burning for around two weeks.

What sits here was fired in Bizen kilns. Ash carried by the flame melts on the shoulder and settles like scattered sesame. Where straw was wrapped, a red line runs that not even the maker can predict. Change where a piece stands in the kiln or how the flame passes, and the same clay gives a different view. From the day it arrives it keeps going, gaining sheen slowly with use.

Bizen is one of Japan's Six Ancient Kilns and has fired the same way for close to a thousand years. Two weeks above 1,200C tightens the body until it holds water without glaze. The red line left by straw is hidasuki, the color of salt in the straw reacting with iron in the clay. Melted ash is shizen-yu, and it stops in a different place on every piece. On why it became the choice for sake, read Bizen ware.