Travel stories, unexpected encounters and the crafts that make Japan worth going back for.
Every piece in the shop started somewhere.
Here is where I write about the travel, the people, and the crafts behind it and how to take care of them.
Sourcing diaries from regular trips. Warm encounters with collectors and makers. And the beautiful landscapes.
Deep dives into the traditions I keep returning to: urushi lacquerware, kokeshi, chawan, haori…. And the quiet details that make Japanese craft worth seeking out
Stories from my journal
A quiet morning at Senryūzan: inside a Hagi kiln that has worked since 1826
Senryūzan (泉流山) is a Hagi-yaki kiln in Yamaguchi Prefecture founded in 1826, tracing its roots back further still to the late Edo-period Obata-yaki tradition. The kiln was led for decades by Yoshiga Taibi, a recognised Person of Cultural Merit, and is now run by his son Yoshiga Hatao. Senryūzan still fires in a wood-burning noborigama, one of the few climbing kilns in Hagi still worked this way.
One glaze, three lives: a wood-fired chawan explained
This chawan was fired at the Kakuzan-gama, a kiln built in 1959 inside the Kyoto headquarters of Ōmoto, a Japanese religious movement, by Kaneshige Sozan, a member of Bizen's most celebrated pottery family. It is signed by Deguchi Eiji, who served as Ōmoto's Sōchō (director) from 1958 to 1962. A single white glaze on this bowl developed rust, near-black and crystalline blue effects during firing, the result of flame position, ash deposit and heat variation inside a wood kiln, not of painting or decoration.
Fourteen days, one fire: what it actually takes to fire a Bizen kiln
Bizen-yaki is never glazed and never painted. Everything visible on a finished piece was decided during the firing itself, by potters who spend two weeks feeding a kiln by hand, reading the fire instead of a dial. On a return visit to Shibaoka Tōsendō, the Kōzan-gama kiln in Imbe, here is what that actually looks like from the inside.