Caring for your vintage ceramics: chawan, yunomi and ikebana vases

CareTea ceremonyOther
Written By Hannah

Rinse chawan and yunomi with warm water only, never soap or the dishwasher, and let them dry fully before storing. Whether a piece needs special care depends less on whether it is glazed than on how it was fired. Pre-warm cold bowls before pouring hot tea, change vase water every two to three days, and know that the fine crackle called kan'nyū is not damage, it is the piece aging with use.

Owning a vintage Japanese ceramic piece is more than having it.

It is a connection to a craft tradition, to the hands that made it, and to everyone who used it before you. With the right care, it will outlast you too.

These pieces were made for daily use. They are not fragile. But they are porous, and that changes how you look after them, slightly differently depending on what the piece is actually for. Chawan and yunomi hold tea for minutes at a time. A vase holds water for days. The steps below cover all three.

Collection of vintage Hagi-yaki ceramics displayed on tatami mats, including chawan tea bowls in blue and cream glazes, small bowls, a yunomi cup, and two textured vases, photographed at a Japanese studio pottery

Glaze and porosity are not the same thing

Two separate questions decide how a piece behaves once it comes home. The first is whether it is glazed or unglazed, meaning whether a glass-like coating was applied over the clay before firing. The second, entirely separate question is whether the clay itself is porous or dense, and that comes down mostly to firing temperature, not glaze.

Unglazed does not automatically mean porous. Bizen yakishime is fired unglazed, but at extremely high temperatures, 1200 to 1300 degrees Celsius, hot enough that the clay itself partially vitrifies during firing. The surface tightens and closes as it fires, so a Bizen piece, despite carrying no glaze at all, ends up relatively dense and forgiving.

Glazed does not automatically mean sealed, either. Most glazed ware, Shino, Oribe, and typical Kyō-yaki among them, forms a continuous glassy layer that closes the surface off from water almost completely. But Hagi-yaki breaks that pattern. Its glaze is deliberately soft and slightly porous by design, and over years of use it develops kan'nyū, a fine network of crackle lines running through the glaze itself. Water and tea seep into those cracks the same way they would seep into unglazed clay, which is exactly why a glazed Hagi chawan needs the same careful drying a porous piece would.

Raku being the other exception. It carries a glaze, but the body underneath is fired at only 750 to 1000 degrees Celsius, so the clay never vitrifies and stays genuinely porous. It absorbs water readily and needs longer, more careful drying.

So the honest way to think about a new piece is not glazed versus unglazed. It is: how was this fired, and does the surface, glazed or not, actually let water through. That is the question that decides everything below.

Step 1: Before the first use, waking the clay

  • Vintage ceramics have often been sitting dormant for years. Before you use your chawan or yunomi for the first time, give it a gentle soak in lukewarm water for ten to fifteen minutes. This allows the clay to slowly rehydrate and prevents it from absorbing too much liquid too quickly on first use.

  • Never pour boiling water directly into a cold bowl. Pre-warm it first with lukewarm water, then gradually increase the temperature. The clay and the glaze expand at slightly different rates, and a sudden temperature shock can cause stress in the material over time.

  • Denser, high-fired pieces such as Bizen yakishime need less of this than porous, low-fired ware. A short rinse and a brief soak is usually enough. Raku, the most porous of them, takes a longer first soak, up to an hour, and Step 6 below covers the exceptions.

Step 2: Daily cleaning, keep it simple

  • Rinse your bowl with warm water immediately after use. That is all it needs. Use your fingers or a very soft cloth to remove any residue. No sponges, no abrasive materials.

  • Do not use dish soap. The porous clay will absorb detergent just as readily as it absorbs tea, and your next cup will taste of it. Water is enough.

  • A chawan or yunomi should never go in the dishwasher. The heat, the pressure and the detergents will damage the glaze and accelerate crazing in ways that have nothing to do with the beautiful transformation you want.

Step 3: Understanding the glaze and what it does over time

  • Over weeks and months of use you will notice tiny lines appearing across the glaze. This is kan'nyū, crazing, and it is not damage. It is the bowl beginning to record its life with you. Tea slowly seeps into those fine cracks, staining them amber or brown. The surface gradually warms in tone. After years of use the bowl becomes uniquely yours, marked by your particular tea practice and no one else's.

  • If you want to slow the colour change, soak the bowl in plain water for a few minutes before each use. The clay will absorb water instead of tea. Most people do not do this. They want the transformation.

  • Not every piece ages this way. Fully glazed ware, Kutani yunomi for example, are less porous than something like Hagi-yaki, and will stay closer to their original colour. That is not a flaw, it is simply a different clay and glaze doing what it was made to do.

  • A small number of pieces show a crystalline or heavily pooled glaze rather than an even, smooth surface, often visible as a thicker, glassier patch where the glaze has gathered during firing. This behaves differently again: it is not about porosity, but about the glaze's own chemical stability at that thicker pooling point. With pieces like this, keep the water on the luke-warm side rather than very hot, and rinse and dry the piece fairly soon after use rather than letting tea sit in it for a long stretch.

Step 4: Drying and storage

This is the step most people skip and the one that matters most.

  • After rinsing, pat the piece dry with a clean towel and then let it air dry completely before putting it away. Do not place it upside down on a flat surface, prop it slightly so air can reach the foot. Leave it for several hours, ideally overnight.

  • A damp piece stored in a closed box or a dark cupboard will develop mould inside the clay. Once that happens, the flavour of your tea is affected permanently. It is not difficult to avoid: just make sure it is fully dry before you put it away.

  • If a yunomi set is drying together, give each piece its own space rather than stacking them while still damp. Trapped moisture between two pieces is where problems start.

  • If your piece came with a tomobako, the signed wooden box, store it there once it is completely dry. Never while it is still damp.

Step 5: Ikebana vases, a different kind of water problem

A vase holds standing water for days at a time, which chawan and yunomi never do. That water carries minerals, plant residue and bacteria, and if it sits too long it can leave a faint ring or cloudy deposit on the inside of the glaze.

  • Change the water every two to three days when the vase is in use, and rinse the inside thoroughly each time, not just a quick swirl.

  • If a mineral ring has already formed, a soak in lukewarm water with a small amount of white vinegar, followed by a gentle rinse, will usually lift it. Avoid abrasive brushes on painted or gilded interiors.

  • When the vase is not in use, make sure it is completely dry before storing it, for the same reason as Step 4.

Step 6: Raku and Bizen, two kinds of clay, two kinds of care

Both Raku and Bizen are fired without glaze, and both can be described as porous ceramics if you stop there. But they behave very differently in daily use, because they are fired at very different temperatures, and treating them the same way will either over-baby a Bizen piece or under-care a Raku one.

Bizen yakishime. Because Bizen fires so hot that the clay itself tightens during firing, it needs comparatively little fuss. Rinse a new piece and let it soak in plain water for ten to fifteen minutes, or up to a few hours if you want to be thorough, before its first use with tea or sake. After that, rinse with hot water only, no soap, and let it dry fully before putting it away. Never stack Bizen pieces wet, that is where mould starts. Bizen is also one of the few ceramics where use is genuinely meant to change it: oils from your hands and residue from tea or sake slowly seep into the clay over years, a process called youhen, deepening and smoothing the surface. That is not a problem to prevent. It is the point.

Raku. Raku is fired at much lower temperatures than Bizen and never vitrifies in the same way, which makes it a considerably more porous, more absorbent body. A brand new Raku chawan can seep a small amount of water through the base or release a little dark residue into the soaking water the first few times you clean it, particularly if it has sat unused for a long time. This is normal and not a fault in the piece.

To clean a Raku piece properly, soak it in room temperature water, never above roughly 70 degrees Celsius, for half an hour to an hour, then gently scrub with a soft toothbrush. Baking soda sprinkled directly onto the surface with a little water helps lift ingrained residue. After cleaning, resist the urge to use the piece straight away. Let it dry for at least three to five days, longer in humid weather, ideally in a room with stable temperature and airflow. Repeating the soak and scrub two or three times is normal for a piece that has not been cleaned in a while, one pass rarely finishes the job.

Once dry, before each use, a soak of five to ten minutes is enough, long enough to let the clay absorb water instead of tea without becoming saturated. The first time you use a piece, and after a long period in storage, soak it longer, from about fifteen minutes up to an hour, in lukewarm water. Soaking for too long before use will make the piece noticeably wet when you pour, so keep the pre-use soak brief and reserve the longer deep soak for actual cleaning.

Temperature changes are what damage Raku fastest. If you pour hot water into a Raku chawan, let it cool down on its own rather than moving it into cold air or rinsing it under a cold tap straight after. A sudden shift in temperature is far more likely to stress the clay than the water itself.

A faint earthy or musty scent after use is also characteristic of Raku's open, low-fired structure, not a sign of a problem. It usually settles with regular use as the clay adjusts to contact with liquid, though some owners prefer to keep a strongly scented piece on a shelf rather than in daily rotation. Either is a fine way to enjoy it.

Traditional raku glazes can contain lead. Japanese guidance for tableware advises using raku only for preparing whisked matcha, and keeping acidic liquids such as fruit juice, wine or vinegar out of the bowl.

Step 7: A faint scent after use, and when it means something

Some porous ware, Raku especially, and to a lesser extent unglazed Bizen-yaki or Shigaraki-yaki, can hold onto a faint earthy or musty scent after contact with liquid, even once fully rinsed and dried. This is a characteristic of the clay body itself, fired at low temperatures with an open, absorbent structure, not a sign that something has gone wrong.

  • If a piece develops this after its first use, a soak in hot water with a small amount of dissolved baking soda, followed by a thorough rinse and full air drying, will usually help.

  • What you do next is really a matter of taste. Some owners keep using the piece daily and find the scent fades naturally within a few uses, as the clay settles into its new relationship with liquid. Others prefer to let a piece like this live on a shelf rather than in daily rotation, and that is just as valid a way to enjoy it. There is no wrong answer here, only what you personally want from the piece.

Read more

More items in our collection

Browse the collection:
Hariya Yūsai's black lacquered natsume tea caddy with gold and red crests, a bamboo whisk, and its signed tomobako with a blue ribbon, on a rustic wood slab.
Lacquered Kōdaiji makie natsume tea caddy with gold and red chrysanthemum and paulownia crests, signed by Yūsai, tomobako
€245.00

Black so deep it looks like still water, and scattered across it, crests in gold and in red, none of them quite where you expect. The gold ones are soft and matte, while the red ones carry tiny flecks of gold that wake up when you turn the lid toward the light. It sits in the palm like a smooth pebble and is hard to put down. It is the kind of small object that makes a shelf, a desk or a tea tray look considered.

It was made by Hariya Yūsai, a makie artist from Ishikawa who is recognised in Japan as a Traditional Craftsman, and he signed and sealed the wooden box himself. That box is why it feels complete: the natsume, the box that names its maker and its style, and the yellow cloth that came with it have stayed together. If you make matcha, this is a proper tea caddy with a real maker behind it. If you don't, it is still something you will want to keep in sight.

Read more →
Black lacquered tea caddy with engraved vermilion peony design, bamboo whisk, and wooden box signed Fujiwara Seiu, on a textured wood surface.
Lacquered tea caddy with engraved vermilion peony, signed Fujiwara Seiu, with tomobako
€210.00

Turn it toward the light and the red changes. What looks like a deep, dark red on black shifts to a brighter red with a hint of pink, and the blossoms on the lid and body turn delicate rather than graphic. It is a small, rounded caddy with flowers drawn right across it, and with every tilt you notice a different one. It is the kind of object you pick up to look at and end up turning in your hands.

The lacquer is glossy and smooth. Run a fingertip over the flowers and in places you can feel the cuts through the lacquer, fine lines that sit in the surface rather than on top. At approx. 54 g the natsume is light in the palm, small and rounded.

Read more →
Shino chawan, signed, Mino tradition with original tomobako
Shino chawan, signed, Mino tradition with original tomobako
€255.00

Pick this bowl up and it surprises you: for something this size, it settles low and steady in your hands, the thick walls giving it a grounded weight rather than a fragile one. The rim moves in its own irregular line, never quite a perfect circle, so no two angles look the same. White glaze breaks into rust-orange blush along one side like scorch marks, and it is easy to imagine how matcha would sit inside it, pooling green against that warm white and orange, exactly the kind of contrast tea practitioners seek out a bowl for.

What makes this one worth taking home rather than admiring from a distance is that it comes whole: the original tomobako, signed and sealed, and the silk wrapping cloth that carried it, stamped with the same seal as the box. Pieces where the box, cloth and bowl are still this clearly matched to each other carry a quiet kind of proof in themselves.

Read more →
Pair of large Tsuchiyu kokeshi by Abe Ichirō, 46.5 cm and 36 cm, red and black banding, signed, Shōwa period ca. 1970s
Pair of large Tsuchiyu kokeshi by Abe Ichirō, 46.5 cm and 36 cm, red and black banding, signed, Shōwa period ca. 1970s
€355.00

Two kokeshi stand side by side, one almost half a metre tall and both wearing traditional bands of red, black, purple and bare wood from collar to base. There are no flowers and no scenes: the stripes are the whole design, and at this height two of them fill a shelf or sideboard by themselves. Under a straight fringe both faces look out with a calm gaze.

Abe Ichirō learned the Tsuchiyu craft from his father, Abe Shinjirō, and in 1967 rebuilt one of his father's Taishō period kokeshi, a body decorated with lathe lines only. These two are decorated the same way: every band was painted while the wood turned on the lathe, so the pattern is the making itself.

The head turns and produces a soft squeak when rotated. In Japanese this is called the cry of a child, and it is one of the quiet surprises of traditional Tsuchiyu kokeshi.

→ Curious how Tsuchiyu compares to the other ten traditional kokeshi lines? Read the full guide.

Read more →
Hagi-yaki chawan by Kaneko Nobuhiko, salmon pink with white glaze drips, on its signed wooden tomobako with a tied strap, a bamboo whisk, and a tatami mat.
Hagi-yaki chawan signed by Kaneko Nobuhiko of the Jōzan kiln, with tomobako
€235.00

One ribbon of milky white glaze runs across the shoulder of this bowl and ends in a single fat drop, as if someone tipped a jug of cream and stopped mid-pour. Beneath it the body is salmon pink shading to apricot, freckled with dark iron and ringed with the ripples of the wheel. It sits wide and open on a tall foot, a shape that looks generous even from across the room. Beside it stands the box it was made to live in, still tied with its original cord.

Kaneko Nobuhiko (金子信彦) learned Hagi-yaki without a teacher, going from kiln to kiln and asking to be shown. At eighteen, in 1969, he joined the Jōzan kiln beside Hagi Castle and has made his career there. In 2007 the Minister of Education's prize at the Japan Ceramics Exhibition went to a sculpture of his a full metre wide, and this bowl comes from the same hand at the scale of two cupped hands. Whoever keeps it chooses a tea bowl with a named hand behind it over an anonymous one.

A Hagi-yaki glaze is never fully sealed. It develops a fine network of cracks called kan'nyū as it cools in the kiln, and through those cracks water, and later tea, slowly enters the clay beneath. Watch what happens in real time in my journal.

Read more →
Crackle-glazed Hagi-yaki chawan by Tamamura Shōgetsu (1972), with a reddish foot, resting on its signed wooden box.
Hagi-yaki chawan signed by Tamamura Shōgetsu, Kōfūan kiln, dated 1972
€285.00

This chawan is lighter than it looks, which is the first thing you notice picking it up. The rim stays fairly calm, an even white, but your eye drops toward the base and that is where the crackle really lives, dense and a little chaotic compared to the rim above it, tea stains settled into every line of it. Someone used this bowl, and used it often enough that its history is written right into the glaze. Outside there is less drama. The white just fades out unevenly on its way down, and somewhere before the foot it gives up entirely, leaving bare reddish clay that is rough enough to feel the difference with your thumb.

This piece carries the signature of Tamamura Shōgetsu, whose kiln in Hagi has stood since 1952. Hagi ware ages the way almost no other tea ceramic does, the glaze slowly taking on colour and character through use, something tea drinkers have a specific word for. The box has its own small story too: an inscription inside notes the bowl was given as a gift in May 1972, back when there was only one Shōgetsu working the kiln, since the name did not pass to a second generation until 1988.

Read more →
Tenmoku matcha bowl by Mizue Katsukazu, drip glaze chawan with bamboo chasen
Tenmoku dripglaze chawan signed Mizue Shoichi, Miko-gama Fukuoka, Shōwa period with original wooden tomobako box
€285.00

Deep, dark glaze pools thick around the base of this bowl, catching amber and rust where the light hits it at an angle. The drip is heavy and slightly uneven, the kind of effect that only comes from letting the glaze run right to the edge of what the kiln can hold before it sticks. In the hand it has real presence, a weight that settles rather than balances.

This matcha bowl has a thick application of glaze. In the world of Tenmoku, getting that heavy, "frozen-in-motion" drip without it sticking to the kiln floor is a sign of a true expert who knows exactly when to cut the heat.

The deep, chocolate-brown tones of the glaze provide a rich, lustrous backdrop that contrasts beautifully with the vibrant green of freshly whisked matcha. It comes with its original wooden tomobako box, carefully signed by the maker, adding provenance and ceremony to the piece.

Curious what to look for beyond the glaze? I wrote about why a chawan's weight and shape matter more than people expect. Read it here in my journal.

Read more →
Pair of omiyage kokeshi with folding panels, Sado Island and Hida region, signed by Sato Suigai, Shōwa period
Pair of omiyage kokeshi with folding panels, Sado Island and Hida region, signed by Sato Suigai, Shōwa period
€85.00

They are the same object twice: same flat panels fanning out from the waist, same simply painted face with a faint blush at the cheek, same red square seal on the base. But open them and they show two completely different corners of Japan. One carries the Okesa dancer of Sado Island and the sea cliffs of Senkaku Bay. The other shows the lacquered festival float of Takayama and the steep-roofed farmhouses of the Hida countryside. Same format, same hand, two worlds.

Sato Suigai (佐藤翠涯) was a Gunma-born kokeshi master and multiple Prime Minister Award winner who made this flat-panel omiyage kokeshi for travellers returning from destinations across Japan. These two pieces show that practice clearly: the same maker, the same form, two different regions, each panel a compression of what that place most wants to be remembered for. Together they work as a pair not because they match exactly, but because they rhyme. The last photo shows their bigger sister in our collection.

The larger lady has aged to a slightly darker wood tone than the smaller lady, the kind of natural variation that happens when two pieces live their decades separately before finding each other again.

→ Interested to read more about the woodworking on kokeshi like these? I wrote about it in my journal.

Read more →
Onta-yaki matcha chawan from the Kobukuro kiln, signed 鹿峰 Rokuhō, with tomobako and shiori
Onta-yaki matcha chawan from the Kobukuro kiln, signed 鹿峰 Rokuhō, with tomobako and shiori
€255.00

Held up to the light, this bowl is not black at all. The glaze is a deep brown that reads almost black at first glance, and over it runs a blue that settles in patches inside and out, pooling thickly before it stops at a clean line of bare clay around the foot. On the table it is dark and quiet; in your hands, turned toward a window, it becomes warm and layered.

It was made at the Kobukuro kiln in Onta, one of nine family workshops in a small mountain village in Ōita Prefecture that has made folk pottery in much the same way for about three centuries. Onta potters traditionally leave their work unsigned, and they mostly make plates, jars and rice bowls for everyday use rather than bowls for tea.

It is dated to Shōwa 47 (1972) and signed by its maker, Rokuhō (鹿峰), on its foot and on its original wooden box.

Read more →
Large Ginzan kokeshi by Izu Mamoru, signed and dated 1998
Large Ginzan kokeshi by Izu Mamoru, signed and dated 1998
€160.00

The scale alone stops you. At 36.5 centimetres, this is a kokeshi that holds a shelf on its own. The body is a clean, pale column, with two oversized red chrysanthemums running almost its full height, petals brushed outward in confident strokes around small golden centres. Red at the collar, red at the base. The face is quiet and a little knowing, framed by a precise black bob.

Izu Mamoru spent decades making Ginzan kokeshi at Ginzan Onsen, in the family workshop that is still the only place this style is made. He died in 2019. On the base of this piece he recorded the exact day it was finished, June 23, 1998, and his age at the time, 73.

Most kokeshi carry a name. This one also carries a moment.

Want to understand the difference between dentō and sōsaku kokeshi? I wrote about it, with a trip through Fukushima along the way.

Read more →
Katō Shōzan's Oni-Shino chawan, rustic white with rust brown speckles and textured walls, alongside a bamboo whisk and scoop on a green tatami mat.
Oni-Shino winter chawan signed by Katō Shōzan, Enshō-gama, Mino ware
€235.00

It is the snow white and the specks sprinkled all over along with the shaped outer wall that catches the eye. The walls of this bowl have been pressed inward all the way around, leaving a ring of shallow hollows that sit exactly where your fingers want to go. Rust brown flecks and drips gather in those hollows and trail down from the rim through a thick, white glaze, so the decoration follows the movement of the hand that shaped it. It is a sturdy, generous bowl, made to be held rather than admired from a distance.

It was made by Katō Shōzan at the Enshō-gama kiln in Oroshi, a pottery district of Toki in the Mino region of Gifu, the region where Shino ware was born in the late sixteenth century. The kiln's own printed leaflet speaks of carrying forward the techniques handed down from the founders of Mino pottery. This is an oni-Shino chawan, iron beneath feldspar glaze, signed by hand with 正山 scratched into the clay of the base: a working tea bowl from a working kiln, ready to be used every day.

Read more →
Nakanosawa Takobozu kokeshi signed by Seya Jūji
Nakanosawa Takobozu kokeshi signed by Seya Jūji
€145.00

There is something almost comical about the size of her face and head against her narrow, tapering body beneath it, and that imbalance is exactly the point. Her face tilts forward slightly as if caught mid-thought, one eyebrow set a touch higher than the other, giving it a expression that shifts depending on the angle you catch it from. At just over 30cm, she commands more presence than its slim frame suggests.

This piece was made by Seya Jūji, who trained directly under Iwamoto Yoshizō, the maker who defined the Nakanosawa Takobozu style. Yoshizō gave Jūji a simple instruction early on: paint cherry blossom, not peony, so your work can always be told apart from mine. That small act of teaching is still visible on the body of this doll today, decades later. Jūji went on to become the maker Tokyo dealers turned to when they needed the earliest Takobozu designs faithfully reconstructed, work that helped keep the whole tradition alive through the 1970s.

→ Want to understand the difference between dentō and sōsaku kokeshi? I wrote about it, with a trip through Fukushima along the way.

→ Curious how Tsuchiyu compares to the other ten traditional kokeshi lines? Read the full guide.

Read more →
Two Maruta Nobumasa Kuromuta-yaki bowls, inverted on wood, showing speckled clay with white drips, black strokes, and wine-red glaze patches.
Two hira-chawan, shallow Kuromuta-yaki tea bowls from the Maruta Nobumasa kiln with tomobako
€235.00

A milky white glaze drips from the rim of both bowls, as if each one had been dipped upside down and left to run before the fire. Beneath it, thick strokes of near black glaze stop and pool like brush marks, and patches of wine red seem to glow from inside the glaze itself. The clay underneath is pale grey, freckled with iron, so everything painted on it sits like ink on paper.

Wide and shallow, the two bowls side by side are clearly siblings rather than twins: no two strokes fall in quite the same place.

They come from the Maruta Nobumasa kiln in Takeo, the last working kiln in Kuromuta, a mountain village that once counted around forty. The kiln's founder, who set up on his own in 1961, chose to make ware for daily use rather than for exhibition, and these bowls still feel like they want to be picked up. They arrive with their original tomobako, hand inscribed and carrying the kiln's red seal.

Read more →
Aka-raku chawan signed by Sawada Hiroyuki, Myōkenzan Kurokawa kiln, with tomobako
Aka-raku chawan signed by Sawada Hiroyuki, Myōkenzan Kurokawa kiln, with tomobako
€215.00

The pale drip of glaze down the side is what makes this aka-raku bowl unmistakable. Around it the surface is rugged, sandy and pitted, with glossy patches where the glaze has gathered, and the soft white run cuts across all of it.

Sawada Hiroyuki has spent decades on raku, the ware most closely tied to the tea ceremony, at his own kiln in the hills of Hyōgo, and his work has been shown in the department store galleries of Osaka. This bowl comes with the original box, written by hand with the name of his kiln village and his given name.

This chawan is aka-raku (赤楽): red raku. In the tradition of the tea bowls first made in Kyoto in the sixteenth century. A raku bowl is shaped by hand from a lump of clay, pinched and raised without a wheel, then refined with a spatula. It is glazed and fired at around 800 to 900 °C depending on the source, and lifted out of the kiln while still hot. In aka-raku the red comes from iron rich clay showing through a clear glaze. Sawada is a raku specialist and this bowl is consistent with the tradition.

Read more →
Tall red raku style tsutsu chawan with white drip glaze, Hioki Nanshū kiln, late Shōwa
Tall red raku style tsutsu chawan with white drip glaze, Hioki Nanshū kiln, late Shōwa
€95.00

A tall, straight sided tsutsu shape bowl the colour of terracotta after rain, standing on a small foot as if lifted. Cream marks cross the surface like quick brushstrokes, and on one side a white glaze runs down from the rim and fades halfway. It is as high as it is wide, about 10 cm each way, so it fills both hands the way a winter tea bowl should.

It comes in a box stamped and sealed by the Hioki Nanshū kiln in Kagoshima. The kiln is still active today, on the site of the Daijō-ji, the family temple of the Hioki Shimazu family.

Read more →
Inuyama-yaki chawan by Kujiro with original tomobako box and shiori, matsukawa bark glaze tea bowl
Inuyama-yaki matsukawa glazed chawan by signed by Osawa Kujiro Toen with tomobako Shōwa period
€255.00

The glaze does the talking before anything else does. Uneven brown breaks across the exterior like bark peeling off a trunk, dark where it pools thick, almost gold where it thins, smooth and glossy to the touch despite all that movement. Turn the bowl in your hands and the surface catches the light differently every few centimetres. Inside, all of that noise drops away: a quiet grey-green settles at the base, still and cool against the storm outside.

This bark-textured glaze, matsukawa-yaki, has its own story. It was developed at a small kiln in Inuyama, Aichi Prefecture, now known simply as Matsukawa-gama after the technique that made it locally famous. The kiln has worked continuously for over a century, and this particular glaze earned its reputation the slow way: refined over two generations and shown at exhibitions across Japan until the public gave the workshop its name. 

New to chawan and wondering what to look for? Read about why size and weight change everything in my journal.

Read more →
Ki-Seto chawan by Yasuda Masahiro, signed with impressed seal, Shōwa period
Ki-Seto chawan by Yasuda Masahiro, signed with impressed seal, Shōwa period
€95.00

Low, straight-sided and steady, this bowl sits like a small drum. Ridge after ridge circles its mustard-yellow body from rim to foot, and three drips of green run down one side as if they could not wait for the kiln to cool.

It was made by Yasuda Masahiro (安田全宏), a Kyoto-born potter who trained under Kiyomizu Rokubei and rose to councillor of the Nitten, Japan's leading national art exhibition. He received the Prime Minister's Prize at the Japan Contemporary Arts and Crafts Exhibition, and his work is held by the Shiga Museum of Art. Here he takes up Ki-Seto, the yellow tea ware of sixteenth-century Mino, and makes it his own: a bowl from a potter who knew both the tea room and the museum gallery.

Read more →
Mizushima Jirō chawan, textured blue-speckled grey glaze, leaning on wood to reveal its tan unglazed foot. Bamboo whisk nearby.
Kagurao-yaki blue chawan by Mizushima Jirō, Denjirōbō kiln, with tomobako and shiori
€215.00

The glaze is what stops you first: smooth under the light, dense with fine blue speckling that seems to change as you turn the bowl, flaring brighter in some angles and settling quieter in others. Run a finger across the surface and it glides.

This bowl comes from a kiln you will not find in any reference book. Mizushima Jirō built it himself at the foot of Kagurao, a hill near an old castle ruin outside Tsuyama, in Okayama Prefecture, and named the ware after the mountain itself.

The ruin belonged to Kagurao Castle, a hilltop fortress whose founding date is undated but which stood active through the Muromachi period, into the late sixteenth century. In his own handwritten shiori, he describes using local clay and firing with red pine, the same wood traditionally used to fire Bizen ware in the same prefecture, chasing a glaze effect he calls a "unique melting field," one he admits he was still trying to master.

He called his own work raku-yaki, and the bowl itself, dense, high fired stoneware with a hard, unglazed foot, tells a story closer to a personal, self-taught practice than to the soft, low fired tradition the word usually points to. Owning this piece means owning one individual potter's own account of his materials and process, in his own hand, with nothing added or assumed beyond it.

Read more →
Tsugaru kokeshi with peony motif, signed by Sasamori Junichi, Shōwa period
Tsugaru kokeshi with peony motif, signed by Sasamori Junichi, Shōwa period
€115.00

The waist gives it away before anything else does. Where most kokeshi run in one continuous column, this one pulls in sharply below the shoulders, then widens again toward the base, an hourglass silhouette you will not find anywhere else among the eleven dentō traditions. A large, loosely brushed peony spreads across the front of the body in red and deep plum, painted with a freer, more painterly hand than the tightly repeated florals of the older Miyagi lines. The head and body are turned from a single piece of wood, no seam at the neck, the whole figure carrying itself with an easy, almost sculptural confidence.

Tsugaru is the youngest of the eleven recognised kokeshi traditions, only reaching back to the 1920s, born once adults rather than children became the main buyers of kokeshi as hot spring souvenirs, and freed from the older, stricter toy-shaped conventions as a result. It is made using a genuinely difficult reverse-lathe technique, a method every other line has largely abandoned. This piece is signed by Sasamori Junichi, born 1954, a maker working within the Nuruyu style associated with the tradition's founder, Mori Hidetarō. The peony carries real weight here: it is the crest of the Tsugaru clan itself, not simply a decorative flower, which makes this a piece that carries the region's own history on its body, not just a pattern borrowed from elsewhere.

→ Wondering where Tsugaru fits among the eleven kokeshi traditions? Here's the full picture.

Read more →
White glaze chawan with blue ice crackle and iron oxide glaze flow, signed Sansōan with tomobako
White glaze chawan with blue ice crackle and iron oxide glaze flow, signed Sansōan with tomobako
€185.00

The glaze on this one shifts from a pale, crackled blue-grey into a deep, warm rust-brown that spills down one whole side like something poured rather than painted. Streaks of ochre yellow brown run through the transition, and the unglazed foot beneath it all is a rich, earthy red-brown, left bare so the clay can speak for itself.

This chawan comes with its original tomobako, signed and sealed 山桑庵 (Sansōan), a studio potter’s workshop name. It has the kind of glaze variation that rewards turning it slowly in the hand before you drink from it.

→ Curious to know why the size and weight of your chawan makes a difference when drinking tea from it? Read more in my journal.

→ Want to see this bowl meeting the early morning sunlight? Here it is on my Instagram.

Read more →
Nagasawa Minoru, Izushi-gama chawan with a soft grey-blue crackled glaze and pink blush visible in the interior, on a wooden surface.
Izushi ware chawan by Nagasawa Minoru, Izushi-gama, signed tomobako, Hagi style, Shōwa period
€255.00

Pick this bowl up and the shape answers a question before you ask it. One side of the rim sits straighter than the rest, a shallow, deliberate press into the wall that meets your fingers exactly where a hand naturally rests. The glaze is a soft grey-blue, smooth under the fingertips, and where it catches the light around scattered pinholes a faint pink blush shows through, the same warm pink that spreads openly across the whole interior. Fine crackle runs over every surface, the kind that only comes from decades of tea passing through it.

This bowl carries the signature of Nagasawa Minoru, third generation head of Izushi-gama, the Nagasawa family workshop that has worked in Izushi, Hyōgo Prefecture, since 1907. Minoru trained at the Kyoto Municipal Ceramics Training Institute before turning to painting under Akamatsu Unrei in Osaka, and went on to win the Hokuto Prize at the Nitten exhibition, serve as a Nitten judge, and receive Japan's National Yellow Ribbon Medal in 1974. Izushi-gama is best known for pure white porcelain, but Minoru was the generation who also worked in local clay, and this bowl, with its Hagi-like crackle and blush, is a rare piece of evidence of that side of his work.

Those small pinholes in the glaze aren't unique to Hagi and Shino wares alone. Curious what causes them, and why tea masters have prized them for centuries? Read more about su-ana, the "nest holes" of Japanese glaze here.

Read more →
Shino chawan by Katsura kiln with white and red speckled glaze and crazing, a bamboo whisk, and tomobako with ribbon on a mat.
Shino winter chawan with tomobako, red speckled glaze
€225.00

Pick this winter chawan up and you understand immediately why it exists: a thick, heavy matcha bowl built for cold hands around a hot drink.

The glaze runs white to pale grey, broken everywhere by deep red speckles that catch a faint metallic glint when the light moves across them, and a single pale, branch-like line traces down one side like frost on a window. Inside, the glaze has cracked into a fine web, delicate as broken ice.

This is not a bowl you sip from one-handed. It asks to be held in both palms, the way you would hold something you did not want to put down too soon, which makes it the kind of chawan that earns its keep on the coldest mornings.

Read more →
Tsutsu chawan with turquoise and grey crackle glaze, beside a wooden tomobako with Tsuchiya Issui inscription and a yellow ribbon, on a rustic wooden stand.
Unavailable
(sold) Hand thrown winter tsutsu chawan with layered turquoise and grey glaze, wooden box included
€90.00

Tall and straight-walled, this tsutsu shaped chawan holds its heat the way it holds attention, a shape traditionally reached for in the colder months. It hols a substantial, satisfying weight in the hand. The glaze pools into a clear turquoise on one side, breaking into a soft, speckled grey field, with warm brown lines tracing all over the body. It is a bowl that draws the eye before it ever reaches your hands.

This chawan comes with a wooden tomobako inscribed with the name of a Hagi-yaki maker. The glaze and form of the bowl itself are not typical of Hagi-yaki, so I can't confirm this is its original box. Japan has an enormous number of studio potters, each with their own variations, so I'm not ruling it out either. The box reads: Tsuchiya Issui (土屋一翠), 12th generation, Hongama kiln (main/head kiln) and Hagi-yaki. Either way, it's a genuine wooden box and comes included. It keeps the cup safe in your home.

Read more →
Tokkuri and four stacked ochoko with a pink to light blue crackled glaze, on a low wooden table. A tatami mat and Japanese art print are in the background.
Hagi-yaki sake set, tokkuri and four ochoko, Shōwa period
€75.00

The gradient is the first thing that stands out A soft blush at the base, the colour of a winter sunset, rising into a cool pale blue-grey at the rim, as though the glaze caught its breath halfway through. One tokkuri and four ochoko, every piece moving through the same shift of colour, every piece a slightly different temperature when you hold it.

Hagi-yaki stands just behind Raku in the old hierarchy of Japanese ceramics, and its reputation rests on one quality: the clay is porous. Over years of use, sake works its way slowly into the surface and the colours shift. The Japanese call this shichibake, the seven transformations. For sake ware, this is not wear; it is the point. This set bears a kiln stamp pressed into the unglazed foot of each piece.

Pour sake into this set once and you have started something. Hagi clay is porous, so every cup you drink from leaves a trace: a slow, quiet shift in colour that the Japanese have a name for. Nobody can rush it, and no two sets change in quite the same way. I wrote about what actually happens inside the clay, why the crazing matters, and how to help the change along instead of fighting it. Read the full story.

Read more →
Two Yunomi cups, front view, by Kitoen kiln with pale grey-green craquelé glaze, irregular iron-brown patches, and yellow ume blossom decoration, on wood.
Yunomi pair with Karatsu-style glaze and ume decoration, Kitoen kiln, Seto-ware, Shōwa period
€65.00

Two tea cups in a pale grey-green glaze, each with large iron-brown patches breaking through the surface in irregular shapes. The glaze has fine craquelé throughout and a darker iron line at the rim. On one side of each cup, yellow dots in overglaze enamel sit among white areas where the iron recedes, forming a loosely painted ume blossom. The ribbed throwing lines are visible under the glaze and the form tapers slightly toward a small raised foot. These are cups that reward looking at closely.

The glazing follows the Karatsu tradition: a feldspathic base with iron-oxide patches applied before firing, the two glazes pooling and bleeding against each other in the kiln. Seto potters have worked in this style since the Edo period, producing teaware in which each piece comes out differently from the one fired beside it.

Read more →
Kabuki ningyo doll pair: left doll in red kimono with black hair and hat; right doll in red and black, with wild orange hair and wider stance.
Pair of Kabuki theater ningyo dolls with silk and gofun depicting Kagamijishi, Shōwa period
€125.00

Two dolls, two colours of hair, one story. The figure on the left has black hair, a small ceremonial hat, and the composed bearing of a court lady. The one on the right has wild orange-red hair that falls loosely around the shoulders, a wider stance, and a presence that is not quite still. They are in matching reds and golds, on matching black lacquered bases, and they belong together in a way that is immediately clear even before you know why.

These two figures represent characters from Kagamijishi, one of the most celebrated dances in the Kabuki repertoire. The lady-in-waiting Yayoi dances with a lion-head mallet at the New Year. The lion spirit takes hold of her. The performance that follows is among the most spectacular in Japanese theatrical tradition: a transformation from stillness to wildness, from restraint to pure expression. These dolls hold both moments at once.

Read more →
Wood-fired stoneware sake set tokkuri and two guinomi natural ash glaze, Shōwa period Japan, displayed on wooden plank, cups stacked
Rustic sake set, tokkuri and two guinomi, blush ash glaze, incised maker's mark, Shōwa period
€95.00

Three pieces, one fire. Three pieces that look like they came out of the same fire. The tokkuri sits low and round, rising to a narrow neck with a folded rim, its surface shifting from cream and pale sand to patches of salmon pink and russet. The two guinomi match it without being identical: same rough clay, same warm blush, same quiet irregularity. It is a set for someone who wants texture and warmth on the table, not polish.

Natural ash glaze is not applied. It happens. During wood firing, ash from the kiln settles on the clay and melts at high temperature, creating a surface that no two pieces share in exactly the same way. The warm pinkish tones, the sandy patches, the places where the fire moved differently, these are all direct records of the kiln at work.

This set is consistent with the wood-firing tradition of central Japan, where stoneware has been produced for over a thousand years known for exactly this kind of rugged, flame-marked surface. The set is signed, this was made by someone who wanted to be known for it.

Read more →
Kenzan chawan featuring dynamic yōhen glaze in ruby red, gold, and turquoise, perched on a rustic wood stand. A chasen and tomobako box are in the background.
Unavailable
(sold) Glazed Tokoname-yaki chawan signed by Kenzan, with tomobako box, late Shōwa period
€175.00

The glaze moves like something still in motion. Deep ruby red pools into turquoise and gold where the heat pulled it during firing, no two patches settling the same way twice. This chawan sits low and asymmetrical in the hand, the shape giving it a slight, deliberate lean rather than a perfect circle.

Around the shoulder runs a row of turquoise blossoms, each with a red heart, set into turquoise and olive gold like petals that have landed on the glaze. Inside these blossoms continue their journey in the glaze. The blue glaze pools towards the bottom.

Tokoname is one of Japan's oldest kiln cities, a place where potters have been working the same iron-rich clay for over nine centuries. Kenzan (権山) is a studio potter from that tradition, working not in the unglazed red clay Tokoname is best known for, but in glazed, fire-transformed surfaces that show what that tradition can do when a maker pushes it somewhere unexpected.

He signed this piece and wrote sakura-bana-mon (桜花文 (cherry blossom pattern) written on the tomobako lid beside the kiln name: a maker confident enough to let the kiln decide where the color would go.

Read more →
Satō Zenji's Tsugaru daruma pair: two wooden dolls with hand-painted fierce eyebrows and downturned mouths, one with a red base, on a tatami mat.
Pair of Tsugaru daruma signed Satō Zenji, Nuruyu Onsen, Shōwa period
€95.00

Two round, hand painted faces, caught mid scowl, sit side by side like they have been arguing for decades. One wears a red collar around its base, the other is left in plain wood, and both carry the same fierce eyebrows and downturned mouth carved from a single turn of the lathe. There is no seam anywhere on either piece, just one continuous curve from crown to base, the kind of shape that only comes from a craftsman who has made this exact form hundreds of times before.

Both are signed on the base with the place name Nuruyu and the name Satō Zenji, one of the two craftsmen credited with keeping the Tsugaru kokeshi tradition alive in the town of Kuroishi after the war. He learned the trade from master Mori Hidetarō starting in 1955, then spent years travelling to department stores across Japan to demonstrate the craft in person, building an audience for a doll making style that had nearly disappeared. Owning a signed pair like this means owning a small, physical piece of that revival.

Curious where the daruma shape itself comes from, arms and legs withered away through nine years of meditation? I stood among a thousand of them on a hillside in Osaka. Read about it in my journal.

Read more →
Irregularly shaped Sangiri Bizen chawan by Inomata Masaaki, showing unglazed rust, orange, ash grey, and silver tones, on a tatami mat next to its signed wooden box.
Sangiri Bizen chawan signed by Inomata Masaaki, Dentō Kōgeishi late Shōwa to Heisei period
€195.00

The clay tells you everything before you even touch it. One side has gone the colour of embers still holding heat, deep rust and burnt orange bleeding into ash grey where the flames never quite reached, and across the rim that grey turns almost silver, dusted like the first frost on a window. No glaze was ever applied here. Every mark, every shift in tone, is the direct signature of ten days or more inside a wood fired kiln, clay and flame negotiating the surface between them.

This bowl carries the seal of Inomata Masaaki, a Bizen potter based at the Saizōbō kiln in Okayama prefecture and one of the region's certified Dentō Kōgeishi, a formally recognised Traditional Craftsman title awarded by the prefecture. He built his own climbing kiln and became independent in 1975, after training under a respected Bizen workshop, and has spent the decades since inside a tradition that dates back over a thousand years to Japan's oldest surviving pottery kilns. A chawan carrying his signature is not a stylistic guess. It is a documented piece from a working master within one of the Six Ancient Kilns of Japan.

→ Fourteen days, one fire: what it actually takes to fire a Bizen kiln. A visit to Shibaoka Tōsendō during an active firing, standing at the kiln mouth while the family read the fire by eye and ear alone. Read the full visit in my journal.

Read more →
browse collection
👉 back to all journal posts
Hannah
Previous

Caring for your vintage kokeshi
Next

My journey through the Mountains of Fukushima and the kokeshi I meet throughout Japan