高浜焼

Takahama ware

Takahama ware is a kiln set at Takahama, where the white beaches of the west coast of Amakusa run on.
Behind its making lies the quarrying of Amakusa pottery stone, which has gone on since the middle of the sixteenth century.

Amakusa pottery stone has long been used as the main raw material for the porcelain that represents Japan: Arita ware, Imari ware, Mikawachi ware and more.
In the Edo period Hiraga Gennai is said to have praised it as "a clay for ceramics, a material without equal under heaven," so marked is the white, translucent beauty of the surface it produces. It is also a very unusual stone, in that porcelain can be made from that one stone alone.

In 1762 Ueda Dengoemon, sixth of the Ueda family, invited potters from Hizen and opened a kiln at Sarayama in Takahama. That was the beginning of Takahama ware.
Since then the techniques have been handed down through the generations, and porcelain has gone on being made that draws on the whiteness only Amakusa pottery stone gives.

Today we use raw stone of especially high quality, with almost no iron content.
It is fired into porcelain that is white, hard and translucent.

While holding to the beauty the material itself carries, we make simple, easy-to-use ware that settles into daily life.

Miru pattern

The miru pattern is now one of the motifs that stand for Takahama ware.
It takes miru, a seaweed that grows in the sea, as its subject, and it is a pattern handed down in Japan from long ago.

At Takahama ware this miru pattern appears on pieces fired around 1820, and around 2007 we revived that design as a reissued series. Today it is drawn on all sorts of ware as the pattern that represents Takahama ware.

The miru pattern has long been used at rites and at celebrations marking the turns of life, and in the Heian period it was taken into the robes of the imperial family and the nobility.
From the way it spreads its branches thickly under the sea, it is said to have been loved as an auspicious pattern wishing for prosperity and long life.

A pattern of the sea, drawn some two hundred years ago, in Takahama where the sea of Amakusa is close at hand.
We carry that design on into the ware of today.