EARTH & FIRE JAPAN

Potters & Places

Potters & Places

Every pot comes from somewhere: a town, its clay, the kilns that have been fired there for generations. Here are the places the first pieces will come from. Pages for individual potters will go up once each potter has said yes to being featured.

Bizen (Okayama)

Bizen ware is made mainly in Imbe, a district of Bizen City in the southeast of Okayama Prefecture. The pieces are fired at 1,200 to 1,300°C with no glaze or painting. The colour comes from the clay, where each piece sits in the kiln, and the ash and charcoal of a firing that can last one to two weeks. The marks have names: goma, small specks of pine ash fused to the clay; hidasuki, red lines left by rice straw; sangiri, grey-blue to dark brown where pieces sat in ash. Imbe long made jars and grinding bowls for kitchens, and later pots for tea. Since 2017 Bizen has been part of Japan Heritage's story of the Six Ancient Kilns.

Mashiko (Tochigi)

Mashiko is a pottery town in Tochigi Prefecture, north of Tokyo. Pots were made in the area long before, but Mashiko ware as it's known today is said to have begun in 1853, when Ōtsuka Keizaburō started making jars, mortars and teapots for everyday use. In the 1920s the potter Hamada Shōji settled here, and the town's work became known far beyond the kitchen. The pieces tend to be thick and plain, shaped from local clay and finished in glazes such as persimmon red, black, amber and rice-bran white. The town holds a pottery fair every spring and autumn.

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