Japanese Pottery

Every other origin story in this series involves something dramatic: a tea master's specific commission, a Korean potter...

Most ceramic traditions in this guide have a founding story and then a long, continuous history afterward. Kutani has a ...

Every tradition covered so far in this series — Bizen, Hagi, Raku — is stoneware: fired clay, opaque, earth-toned by nat...

Every other tradition in this guide developed the way most craft traditions do: a region's clay, a local kiln, generatio...

A Hagi chawan bought new looks almost deceptively plain: a soft, pale glaze, a warm but understated surface, nothing tha...

Pick up a Bizen guinomi and turn it in the light, and you're looking at something unusual in ceramics: an object with no...

In the fifteenth century, a Chinese celadon tea bowl belonging to the shogun Ashikaga Yoshimasa developed a crack across...

Somewhere between a yoga studio's candle display and a home decor blog's list of "wabi-sabi living room ideas," the term...

Somewhere in Japan, on a hillside or a riverbed, there is clay that has not yet become anything. It has no shape, no his...

Every piece of Japanese pottery eventually forces a choice: cover the clay in glaze, or leave it bare and let fire alone...