What happens when water meets Hagi-yaki: kan'nyū and nanabake, watched in real time
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. That absorption, repeated over years, is what causes nanabake, the seven transformations Hagi ware is known for: a permanent, gradual darkening of the bowl's colour. Karahai, a related but separate effect, is the warm pink glow that appears where the glaze runs thin during firing itself, not from use.
I did something with this chawan I do not usually do on camera. I filled it with water and waited.
Within a minute, faint rings appeared across the surface, darker patches spreading out from small marks in the glaze, the kind of thing you would miss entirely if the bowl were dry. It is not damage. It is not a flaw. It is the clay doing exactly what Hagi clay has always done, and it is the clearest way I know to show what everyone means when they talk about nanabake without ever having seen it happen. So I got practical and got my bowl and camera out.
Pouring water into a Hagi-yaki chawan to show how it moves through the kan'nyū crackle glaze, the same process behind nanabake.
The glaze is not sealed
Most ceramics are meant to keep liquid out. Hagi ware is not, not entirely. The glaze develops a fine network of cracks called kan'nyū as it cools in the kiln, tiny fractures where the glaze and the clay body shrink at slightly different rates. Under those cracks sits a soft, porous clay that has nowhere else to go but to absorb whatever meets it.
Pour water into a Hagi bowl and you are watching that structure work in real time. The water finds the kan'nyū, moves through it, and darkens the clay beneath. Give it a few minutes and the bowl looks like a different object, water gathered where the glaze is thinnest, spreading unevenly because no two cracks are the same.
Kan'nyū, nanabake and karahai: what is the difference?
I want to be precise about this, because it is easy to conflate the three.
Kan'nyū is the crack network itself, the physical structure in the glaze that makes everything else possible.
Karahai is a colour effect born in the kiln: a warm pink or blush that appears where the glaze runs thin during firing, present the day a piece leaves the kiln, unrelated to use.
Nanabake is what you are watching happen in these photos, except stretched over years instead of minutes: water, then tea, moving through the kan'nyū and staining the clay permanently.
What you see in these photos is temporary. The bowl will dry out over the next hours and return to how it looked before I touched it. This is also the whole reason why you need to let your chawan and yunomi dry before putting it back in the box. it'll keep the moisture inside if you don't.
Nanabake is not temporary. It is what happens after years of tea, not minutes of water, slowly staining the clay through that same network of cracks until the colour of the bowl has genuinely and irreversibly changed. This is how you can see if a bowl is heavily used or not when you pick it up.
But the mechanism is identical. Every cup of tea you drink from a Hagi bowl moves through the glaze exactly the way this water just did. Nanabake is not a separate process. It is this, repeated for years, with tea instead of water, until the staining stops washing out and starts staying.
Gohonte glaze, and what these four pieces reveal
These four unused pieces show something the water photos above do not: no two Hagi glazes start from the same place, and that starting point is exactly what will determine how each piece absorbs tea over the years ahead.
It starts even before the glaze, with the clay itself. Hagi-yaki is never made from a single clay, but from a blend of three: Daidō clay, low in iron and highly malleable, forms the grey-toned base of most pieces. Mishima clay, dug from an island off the coast, is coarser and much higher in iron, giving a reddish tone and a rougher, more absorbent texture. Mitake clay is fine and nearly white, closer to the kaolin used in porcelain, and is blended in to balance the other two. Every potter mixes these three in different ratios depending on what they want the finished piece to do, and that ratio already decides how porous, how coarse, and how ready to absorb liquid the clay body will be, long before it ever meets a glaze or a kiln.
Alongside kan'nyū and karahai, there is a third term worth knowing here: gohonte (御本手), a pattern of pale pink or white spots that appears where iron in the clay reacts during firing under a white slip, in reduction. The name comes from the Azuchi-Momoyama period, when Japanese tea masters sent order forms, gohon, to Korean kilns specifying the tea bowls they wanted, and the pieces that came back carried these characteristic spots. Unlike kan'nyū, gohonte is not a crack network, it is a colour pattern, closer in nature to karahai but visually distinct: gohonte shows as defined spots, karahai as a broader, softer glow.
Look closely at these four and you can already predict how each one will age. The piece with dense, deep-running kan'nyū has more surface for tea to reach, and will likely show visible staining sooner. The piece with strong gohonte spotting will keep those spots as a fixed point of contrast, the crackle around them darkening while the spots themselves stay put. The piece with the heavier white drip glaze will stain unevenly, following the exact pattern the glaze thickness laid down at the kiln.
None of this is predictable down to the precise shape it will take. That unpredictability is the point. But the underlying logic holds, all the way back to the clay bins these three earths sit in before a potter even touches the wheel: whatever the clay and the glaze do during firing sets the map that tea will later follow.
The three clays behind every Hagi piece: Daidō, Mishima, and Mitake, mixed in different ratios depending on what the potter wants the finished piece to do.
How different Hagi pieces will change with tea
A denser kan'nyū network, like the piece with cracks running deep across the whole interior, gives tea more surface area to work with, and will typically show visible staining sooner than a piece with sparse, fine cracking. A piece with strong gohonte spotting will keep those pink spots as a fixed feature, while the surrounding crackle darkens around them, so the contrast between spot and stain actually becomes more pronounced with age rather than fading. A piece with a heavier white drip glaze, where thick glaze meets thin, will often stain unevenly, following exactly the pattern the glaze thickness already laid down during firing.
None of this is predictable down to the exact pattern, that unpredictability is the point, but the underlying logic holds: whatever the glaze does at the kiln stage sets the map that the tea will later follow.
Why this matters if you own one
A Hagi bowl behaving like this is not a reason to worry. It is the reason people choose Hagi ware over a fully glazed piece in the first place. A bowl that develops with you, that carries a visible record of every pot of tea poured through it, is not damaged by that record. It is doing what it was made to do.
→ If you want to slow the process down and let it happen evenly rather than in patches, a good soak before first use helps the water fill the cracks gradually instead of finding one weak point first. I cover that, along with the rest of what a Hagi piece asks of you, in the care guide for chawan, yunomi and vases.
→ Want the fuller story on why Hagi ware ages this way, beyond just the mechanism? Read the full Hagi-yaki journal piece.
See the tea ceremony items in our collection
The glaze moves across this bowl like weather crossing a landscape, white where it lies thick, sliding into a soft blue grey where it thins, with a line of warm rust colored fire blush running unevenly along the rim where the clay broke through during firing. A carved geometric pattern circles the exterior, cut through the dark iron ground before the glaze was applied, so the pale clay shows through in a repeating motif that catches the light differently depending on where you stand. Small dark specks surface throughout the glaze, scattered without any pattern, the kind of detail that only shows itself once you start looking closely.
This bowl comes from the Han'emon-gama, a kiln in the Mino region of Gifu Prefecture whose own written history traces its family back through generations of potters working in the Shino tradition, one of the oldest white glaze traditions in Japanese ceramics and still closely tied to the tea ceremony today. The piece is signed with the kiln's stamp on the foot, and it comes with its original tomobako and an accompanying document that lays out the family's own account of its lineage. Owning it means owning a small, physical piece of that continuity.
New to chawan and wondering what to look for? Read about why size and weight change everything in my journal.
There is a quiet violence to how this tokkuri came out of the kiln. No glaze was ever applied, everything you see, the deep olive shoulder, the passages of smoky grey, the flush of aubergine low on the body, happened because ash and flame found this exact spot in the kiln and nowhere else. The form is rounded and a little heavy in the middle, the neck flares just enough to pour cleanly, and it sits with the kind of quiet confidence that unglazed stoneware only earns after firing for days.
This comes from Isezaki Sō, born into one of the defining pottery families of Bizen and a full member of the Nihon Kōgeikai, the Japan Craft Association, since 2004. He trained under Yamashita Jōji from 1987 and has spent the decades since collecting awards at the Nihon Dentō Kōgei-ten and the regional Chūgoku exhibitions that matter most within the tradition. Owning this is owning a piece from someone who has spent a working lifetime answering to that lineage, not performing it.
No glaze, no paint, just fire. I wrote about how Bizen gets its color, in my journal.
Notice: This chawan has found a new home. If you are looking for something similar, scroll down.
Nearly the entire surface disappears into black, a glaze so deep it seems to swallow the light around it. Then, sweeping across one side, a pale arc of ash white clay breaks through, and from that ground three cherry blossom branches rise. The blossoms are carved into the clay itself, the branches traced in warm gold. The bowl is compact, a little heavier than it looks, and it settles into two cupped hands as though it were made for exactly this grip.
Okugawa Katsuomi built his reputation the hard way, striking out on his own rather than working under an established kiln name, and the confidence in this piece shows why that risk paid off. A potter working independently answers to no house style, only to his own hand, and a cherry blossom cut this precisely into a glaze this dark is the kind of detail that gets noticed. This bowl comes with its full history attached, both in the tomobako it still carries and in a maker whose name is now well documented.
Intro paragraphs
The first thing you notice is the collision of opposites. On one face, bold dark figures stride across a cream ground in a repeating procession, painted with the kind of confidence that does not hesitate. Turn the bowl and the motif shifts entirely: a scrolling vine arabesque in the same iron brushwork, curling and looping across the surface. Then the green glaze interrupts everything. It tips over the rim from both sides, drips down the wall, and floods the interior with a deep copper-green that shifts toward teal where it pools thickest. The form does not behave either: the rim is uneven, the walls slightly irregular, the whole shape carrying a deliberate looseness that makes it feel alive in the hand.
This is a chawan in the Ao-Oribe tradition, one of the most irreverent ceramic styles Japan produced. From the Mino region of Gifu Prefecture, Ao-Oribe takes its name from tea master Furuta Oribe (古田 織部), whose aesthetic philosophy embraced asymmetry, bold brushwork, and what he called hyōge: a spirit of wit and ease. A bowl made in this tradition was never meant to be precious. It was made to be picked up without ceremony, to improve with handling, and to grow more interesting the longer it is used.
This is not a commercial production but a purpose-made ceremonial gift from the heart of the Japanese tea world.
The gift itself is an e-Karatsu kōgō, an incense container for use in the tea ceremony, made specifically for this occasion by Inoue Koji of the Kyōzan-gama in Karatsu.
This kōgō was never for sale. It was made to be given: a ceremonial gift commissioned by the headquarters of the Urasenke Tankōkai in Kyoto to mark a recipient's 88th birthday, the milestone the Japanese call beiju. The letter that accompanies it states that the gift comes from Zabōsai, the 16th generation iemoto of Urasenke, the living guardian of one of the three great tea lineages descending directly from Sen no Rikyū.
What you are looking at is not a commercial production. It is a document of the tea world in use.
This bowl has a way of looking complete from any angle. The form is low and wide, the rim gently uneven in the way of something made by hand rather than adjusted toward perfection.
The glaze is a full, dense shining white over most of the body, with orange pushing through directly where the clay asserts itself. It stops you before you know why.
This chawan comes from an earlier generation of Taizan-gama, one of the kilns that has worked in the Tsubaki district of Hagi within a tradition tea masters have placed second only to Raku for four centuries.
The tomobako is inscribed 白萩 茶碗 and the bowl carries the full rectangular 泰山 seal, the older mark of the kiln used before the oven was incorporated as a company.
The first time I held this bowl, I turned it slowly in both hands and tried to work out what I was looking at. Purple, deep crimson, ashy grey, a band of pale white on the inside where the heat had settled differently. None of it looked applied. It looked like something that had happened to the clay rather than something done to it.
That is, more or less, exactly what yakishime is.
Yakishime is the practice of placing unglazed clay in a wood-fired kiln and letting the fire decide the rest. In the Bizen tradition this has been practiced for over a thousand years, and the surfaces it produces, rough clay, fire-born colour, marks that record the firing like a landscape, became one of the foundations of Japanese tea ceremony aesthetics. A bowl made this way was not decorated. It was shaped, placed in a kiln, and submitted to fire.
Read more about Bizen yaki here.
This is a hand-formed chawan, it is made without a wheel. It is wide and low, the kind of form that spreads across your palms when you hold it. The glaze runs from deep coral at the base up through raspberry to a pale rose-cream at the rim, and against this a wash of dark grey pools on the exterior, unplanned, the mark of fire rather than hand. No two aka-raku bowls come out of the kiln with the same surface. This one carries its firing like a weather event.
Raku-yaki (楽焼) is the oldest ceramic tradition in Japan made entirely for the tea ceremony. Each bowl is built by hand without a wheel, fired alone at low temperature, and pulled from the kiln while still glowing. The result is a clay that carries the fingerprints of its making in every surface. Ōno Kyūkō (大野九行) is a studio potter working in this tradition, with the personal seal 九行 pressed into the clay near the foot.
Five cups, same hand, same kiln firing. The glaze is a warm, speckled off-white with just enough green in it to feel alive, and each cup carries a loose, confident brushwork motif: a few strokes of dark iron-brown placed freely around the body, reading as bamboo in wind.
No two are quite identical. The brushwork is not precise. It is not trying to be.
In the world of the tea ceremony, there is a saying: first Raku, second Hagi, third Karatsu. Karatsu-yaki has held that position for four hundred years, and the style of these cups, e-Karatsu, iron-painted Karatsu ware, is one of its oldest and most recognisable forms.
The combination of coarse clay, ash glaze, and brushwork drawn from the natural world has been the defining character of e-Karatsu since the sixteenth century. These yunomi sit directly in that lineage: unpretentious, made to be used daily, and better for it.
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.
The maker Katsukazu is particularly admired for the 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.
Some objects are immediately recognizable for what they are. This one is. The moment you lift the lid, you know exactly who is sitting in your hands: Hotei, the laughing god of contentment, belly forward, expression completely at ease.
Produced at the Seiun-zan kiln in Hagi, Yamaguchi Prefecture, by Okada Yutaka: eighth-generation master of a kiln that has been firing continuously since the Edo period, and holder of the Yamaguchi Prefecture designation for Intangible Cultural Property in Hagi-yaki.
This is not a decorative object made for the tourist market. It is a serious tea ceremony piece with full provenance.
There's a whole philosophy behind why a kogo is left open after use. Read it in my journal.
Plus, I spent a morning at this specific Hagi kiln, read about it here.
A fine karakusa motif winds across the surface, deep red carved into jet black lacquer. The pattern is continuous, one vine curling into the next without a clear start or end, which is exactly the point. Karakusa has stood for eternity and prosperity in Japanese decorative art for centuries, and here it wraps the natsume completely, catching the light differently depending on the angle you hold it at.
This piece was made by Sakamoto Sessai, who trained under Kurosai, the younger brother of Tamakaji Zōkoku, the founder of the Sanuki kinma tradition in Takamatsu on the island of Shikoku.
What makes this specific case special is that the set is still completely intact. The original wooden box with the signature of the master is included, as is the description from the antique shop in Matsuyama where I found this natsume. It is a real find for anyone who appreciates genuine Japanese tea ceremony craftsmanship.
Five cups that move together without being identical. The glaze is the color of old paper washed with rust, white pooling in clouds where it thickens, warm terracotta clay pushing through where it thins. Each cup carries this differently. Set them on a table and the effect is immediate: a family of objects made from the same impulse, none of them the same.
These cups are wide and generous, substantial enough to hold with both hands and feel warmth come through the clay. Hagi-yaki has been placed second only to Raku by tea masters for four centuries. The shira-hagi glaze, made from rice straw ash fired until the carbon burns away, is among the most refined expressions of that tradition.
The set comes with its original signed and stamped tomobako and the kiln's own shiori, giving it a provenance completeness that is unusual for Shōwa-period teaware.
Hagi ware isn't meant to stay the same. Read how it grows with you, in my journal.
Six yunomi and a kyusu, all thrown and fired together in the soft, porous clay that makes Hagi-yaki so distinct, in a glaze that shifts between pearl white and a soft, bruised lavender depending on the light. The cups curve gently inward, sized to sit naturally in both hands. The kyusu is low and full, compact but generous, built for loose leaf tea, with a side handle and a ceramic strainer fitted right into the spout. Nothing about the set feels overworked, and the seven pieces read unmistakably as one gesture.
Most vintage Hagi-yaki arrives with a kiln stamp and nothing else, no way to trace who shaped it or when. This set comes with more: an original tomobako signed and sealed by Kondō Mamoru himself, and his own shiori documenting the piece. Paper trails like that rarely survive on tea ware that has changed hands as often as this has. It turns six cups and a teapot into something you can actually place, not just admire.
Read more about the beauty of Hagi-Yaki that will grow with you in my journal.
I work through my finds in small batches as each piece takes time to research, photograph and write properly. But some items are too good to sit invisible in the backlog, and if you have been looking for a vintage black silk formal haori, I want you to know this one exists.
This is a formal Shōwa-era kuro haori in black rinzu silk with a tone-on-tone hexagonal kikko pattern woven into the fabric, visible only when the light moves across the surface. Scattered across the body and sleeves are hand-embroidered peacock feathers in copper, green, and white, each with the iridescent eye worked in multiple thread tones. A single embroidered kamon sits at the center back seam. The basting stitches are still in place. This haori has never been worn.
The full listing, photographs and price will follow. Want to know the moment it goes live? Scroll down.
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I work through my finds in small batches as each piece takes time to research, photograph and write properly. But some items are too good to sit invisible in the backlog, and if you have been looking for a vintage shibori silk haori kimono jacket with maple leafs, I want you to know this one exists.
This is a Shōwa-era haori in mint celadon green silk with a woven maple leaf pattern running through the fabric itself, visible as shadow and light rather than color. Large clusters of gold kanoko shibori sit against the green ground in rounded shapes, with vertical lines of the same gold running between them. The lining is cream silk with a subtle woven pattern. The original white himo ties are still attached and looped as stored. The condition is exceptional.
The full listing, photographs and price will follow. Want to know the moment it goes live? Scroll down.
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I work through my finds in small batches as each piece takes time to research, photograph and write properly. But some items are too good to sit invisible in the backlog, and if you have been looking for a Taizan klin Hagi-yaki yunomi meteo pair with their original box and documentation, I want you to know this one exists.
This is a meoto set, made for two, named 花容 on the tomobako. One cup runs warm with orange and rust, the other cooler with fine crazing across a celadon-grey glaze. Both from Taizan-gama in Tsubaki, Hagi, with the original signed tomobako and kiln documentation.
A meoto set, made for two, the slight difference in size a deliberate choice: the larger cup for him, the smaller for her. In Japan these sets are a traditional wedding gift, a pair of objects meant to be used together for a lifetime.
The full listing, photographs and price will follow. Want to know the moment it goes live? Scroll down.
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Notice: This set has found a new home. If you are looking for something similar, scroll down.
Item details
A yunomi meteo pair by Mukuhara Yoshitoshi (椋原佳俊), Furuhata-gama kiln, Hagi, Yamaguchi Prefecture. Thrown in the soft, porous clay characteristic of Hagi-yaki, with an ash glaze in pale blue-white that breaks to warm iron-brown at the foot. The surface shows the deliberate finger-pressed facets typical of Mukuhara's hand. One cup is slightly larger than the other: the traditional meoto pairing, one for each member of a household. The original shiori is included, with care instructions and the maker's exhibition history. According to the documentation, Mukuhara exhibited at department stores in Tokyo including Tobu from Shōwa
The glaze on this chawan is the quiet kind. Soft white shifting into blue-grey and pale lilac depending on the light, a surface that looks different in morning sun than in lamplight. The form is generous and low, the kind of bowl that settles into both hands rather than sitting in them.
Hagi ware asks to be held. In the tea ceremony it is the object that passes through the most hands, that is turned and considered from every angle, that is meant to reward this kind of attention over years and decades of use.
The porous clay body gradually absorbs tea, shifting slowly in color, deepening where the glaze cracks finest.
Moriwaki Fumitada made this bowl at his Chigiri-gama kiln in Seto, where a decades-long practice in the technical traditions of Japanese ceramics underlies work that carries Hagi-yaki's quieter, more intuitive qualities.
A grey-green cylinder with a white camellia near the base of the body. The white camellia flower sits brightly against dark brushwork. A branch with leaves painted in loose gestural strokes that look effortless and are not.
Above it, the glaze shifts and pools in variations of green, grey and near-black. The narrow neck rises straight from the shoulder. The whole piece has the quality of something made by someone who no longer needed to think about what they were doing.
The vase is covered in a sophisticated grey-green glaze that shows a fine, well-developed kanyuu crackle pattern. Adding a sense of depth and history to the stoneware. The way the crackle interacts with the speckled underglaze creates a subtle, organic texture that is highly valued in Japanese ceramics.
Kiyomizu Rokubei VI (六代清水六兵衞, 1901 to 1980) was the sixth generation of one of the most significant kiln lineages in the history of Kyo-yaki, a family with nearly 250 years of history in the Gojōzaka district of Kyoto. His work is in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.
This piece comes with its original signed tomobako inscribed 白椿, shirotsubaki, white camellia, and the original printed shiori documentation tracing the Kiyomizu Rokubei lineage across every generation.
Notice: This chawan has found a new home. If you are looking for something similar, scroll down.
Item details
A hand-formed Kyo-yaki matcha bowl by Uno Tōru (宇野徹), Kyoto, ca. 1980. The form is wide and low with angled, faceted walls cut from the clay by hand, sitting on a tall exposed foot ring in warm red-orange. The glaze runs from a dusty blue-lavender at the rim into deeper violet and brown tones toward the base, pooling slightly where it met the foot. The outer surface is rough and textured; the interior is smoother, with a fine craquelé that catches the light.
Uno Tōru was a recognised figure in Kyoto's mid-century craft world. His work was purchased by the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs for the official state gift collection, he received the Minister of International Trade and Industry Prize, and he was consecutively selected for the Nitten, Japan's most prestigious annual fine arts exhibition. He trained under Kanō Mitsuo, a former Nitten councilor, and under a member of the Japan Art Academy.
Signed with maker's seal on the base. Sold with original wooden tomobako and shiori documenting his full credentials. Late Shōwa period, Kyo-yaki (京焼), yōhen (窯変) glaze technique.
The glaze is what stops you. A pale blue-green celadon broken across the entire surface by an ice crackle pattern, large irregular segments divided by dark lines that shift from grey to brown depending on where the light falls. From one angle the turquoise comes forward. From another, the piece reads almost stone. It does not look the same twice.
The form underneath is an organic egg, slightly flattened on the sides, and the indentations there catch the light further still. At 17 centimetres it is a quiet presence: not a statement piece, but the kind of object that earns its place slowly.
Tachikichi has been operating in Kyoto since 1752, founded originally as Tachibana-ya Kichibee in the Shijō Tominokōji district. They design pieces to their own specifications and have them produced at selected kilns across Japan, each one made specifically to carry their name.
Their name on the base of a piece is a signal about standard and curation, the result of nearly three centuries of working only with what meets their criteria.
The glaze moves from deep purple at the base to bright turquoise at the neck, and stops cleanly where it meets the unglazed foot. It is how Ōtani-yaki shows its material honestly, iron-rich clay from Tokushima, fired at high temperature. The glaze applied once and left to do what it does.
This vase comes from the Mori Toki kiln in Naruto, one of the oldest and most documented kilns in the Ōtani-yaki tradition. The Mori family has run this kiln since 1912, and the climbing kiln on their grounds is 28 metres long with eight separate furnaces. It is registered as a national cultural property. Ōtani-yaki itself was designated a national traditional craft in 2003, recognition of a tradition that began in 1784 when an artisan from Kyushu first demonstrated lathe-turned pottery in the village of Ōtani.
The form is that of a tokkuri, a sake flask, with the narrow neck and rounded body designed to be held at the table and poured from. Used as a vase it works just as well: the narrow opening holds a single stem cleanly, and the weight of the clay keeps it stable.
Notice: This chawan has found a new home. If you are looking for something similar, scroll down.
This matcha bowl was made by Matsubara Yasuhiro (松原保宏), a Seto ceramicist whose work was selected five times for the Nitten, Japan's most prestigious national art exhibition. The surface carries madara-yu glaze, fired in a traditional noborigama climbing kiln on pine wood in the 1970s. What you see on the surface is a direct record of that process: warm copper-brown spotting against a grey-blue ground, not decoration but the fire itself made permanent. The original signed tomobako and maker's shiori are included.
The clay here is warm and gritty in a way that reads almost geological. The glaze deepens to amber-brown at the base and fades toward a pale sandy beige at the rim, and the transition between the two is not a line but a gradual dissolve. The form is slightly irregular, soft-shouldered, made without any ambition to be symmetrical.
This bowl comes from the founding generation of one of Hagi's most recognised kilns. The tomobako carries the hanko of Hirose Nanshū (南州), the man who established the Tsubaki-gama Tenpōzan in Hagi. The telephone notation on the shiori dates the documentation to before direct-dial lines existed in the city. Somewhere in the 1960s or earlier.
The shiori itself was signed by his son Hirose Tanga, who took over the kiln and continued his father's practice. That combination (the father's box and seal, the son's documentation) is a quiet record of how Japanese family kilns pass from one generation to the next. Hagi-yaki has held the second rank in the traditional tea master's hierarchy for centuries, behind only Raku. A bowl from the founding generation of a kiln in that tradition is not a common thing to find.
The glaze on this bowl sits differently from most Hagi ware you will encounter. It is pale, almost creamy, with a softness that makes the surface look slightly matte until the light catches it and you see the depth underneath. The craquelé is fine and even. The form is quieter and more settled than early Hagi ware. It is less raw, more considered.
By the time Hirose Tanga made this bowl, he had been working in Hagi for decades. His name had appeared in exhibitions across Kyūshū and Yamaguchi since the 1960s, he had received a national fine arts prize, and his kiln held an official government designation as a traditional craft. The tomobako for this bowl carries his personal signature alongside the kiln name, and the shiori inside contains his full printed biography. That combination of the signed box, named maker and documented career is what the Japanese tea world calls full provenance, and it is genuinely uncommon to find outside Japan.
Three cups, no two exactly alike in shape. Look closely and you'll see it: a slightly different curve here, a different scoring there, the way light catches each glaze a little differently from cup to cup. That's what handmade looks like when nobody's trying to hide it. The clay carries small flecks of stone straight from where it was dug, and the glaze sits warm and understated, never showy. Set out on a shelf or used daily, they hold their own without asking for attention.
These cups come from Shigaraki, one of Japan's six ancient kiln towns, the Nihon Rokkoyo, with pottery traditions reaching back centuries. The original studio sticker still intact, reading Shigaraki-yaki, tezukuri (handmade), Royal Yamamoto.
Shigaraki stoneware has been prized by tea practitioners for generations for exactly this quality: unpretentious, tactile, made to be used rather than admired from behind glass.
Two cups with the same form and entirely different ideas about what a glaze should do. The dark one is covered in silver-white speckle over near-black, dense and even, the kind of surface that looks like it is lit from within. The reddish-brown one is rough and unassuming from the outside. They read as a pair without asking to match.
In Japanese ceramics, pairing one assertive piece with one quiet one follows a long-established logic. The concept runs through tableware, tea ceremony objects and lacquerware across centuries, one surface doing the drama, the other providing ground.
They read as a pair without asking to match, and they work equally well for a cup of sencha, a pour of sake or a small bite alongside.
Three cups that look different every time the light shifts. The copper-green glaze sits somewhere between moss and bottle glass, darker where it pools, lighter where the clay body pushes through at the faceted edges. Stacked, they are almost architectural. In use, each one is its own thing. They work equally well for a bowl of sencha, a pour of sake or a small bite alongside.
The Oribe tradition gave Japanese ceramics its first bold use of colour: a copper-green that runs, pools and breaks against the clay in ways no potter fully controls. Kyoto potters have drawn on that vocabulary for centuries alongside their own refined sensibility, and these cups sit squarely in that line. Made for the table, used and enjoyed.
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I filled a Hagi chawan with water and watched what happened. Within a minute, the glaze showed exactly how it will change with years of tea, and four other pieces revealed just how differently that process can unfold, starting long before the kiln, in the clay itself.
Three generations under one roof, a blue glaze that surprised me, and a cat I bought on the way out. One of my favorite mornings in Hagi, at the Okada kiln.
Perched in the forested hills of Minoh, Katsuo-ji is known throughout Japan as the Daruma Temple, thousands of red daruma cascading down its steps, each one carrying someone's wish. A visit that changed how I see the wooden daruma in our own collection.
Every temple I visit in Japan has the same quality of quiet, and it starts with three things: scent, sound, and a presence that holds the space. Here is how to bring that same intention home, starting with a single kōro and the concept of ma.
Inside the Raku Museum in Kyoto during the Raku Successive Generations exhibition. Chawan from Chōjirō to the 16th Kichizaemon, a quiet garden, and one idea about tradition that stayed with me.
Urushi looks fragile and behaves like the opposite, until it meets a sunny windowsill or a winter radiator. Here is what actually damages lacquerware, what does not, and the handful of habits that keep a piece looking the way it did the day it was finished.
A kokeshi asks for very little once it has found the right spot. Grouped in threes on a shelf, alone on a windowsill out of direct sun, or standing next to something entirely unrelated, like a stack of books or a single dried branch. Here is what I have learned about placing them so they actually get looked at, instead of disappearing into a room.
Every ceramic piece I bring home has already been through decades of hands before mine. A chawan changes colour with tea over the years, a vase collects mineral marks if you let it, and neither of those things is damage. Here is what actually matters when you look after one.
A week in the heartland of kokeshi: Fukushima. From climbing Mount Bandai before sunrise to studying the unique facial expressions in the work of masters like Ichiro and Sato Fumio. Discover how the landscape and deep-rooted woodcarving traditions shape these authentic vintage treasures.
What draws you to a kokeshi is rarely the name on the base. It is the grain showing through the dark wood, the mark the tool left, and the two lines that somehow become a face. A close look at how makers like Usaburo and Sansaku Sekiguchi work with and against the wood itself.
Bizen-yaki has no glaze. Every color, every mark, every surface effect is made in the kiln by fire, ash, and position. This guide explains what hidasuki, goma, sangiri and shiro-Bizen actually are, how they are made, and what to look for when you buy.
There is a small tiger on my desk with gold worn down to almost nothing on its ears and shoulders. It was made for a Year of the Tiger, in Kyoto, by a kiln lineage going back to 1771. The wear is not damage. It is exactly what the gold was always going to do.
Behind the curtain at Raku Studio Waraku in Kyoto's Gion district. How aka-raku and kuro-raku tea bowls are hand-formed, fired, and finished with charcoal by 8th generation master Kawasaki Motoo. A sourcing diary entry from KAIKO&CO.
Furukawacho Shotengai in Higashiyama: an arcade frozen in the 1970s, a kimono specialist with six haori I had not expected to find, and a folder of 1895 Kyoto lithographs from an antique bookstore tucked behind a curtain. Day three of my Sourcing Week in Japan series in Kyoto and Okayama.
An antique market stall on temple grounds in Tokyo's Yanaka cat town, a lacquered doll pair from the ‘50’s with a story about a homesick bride, and a cat print.
A Kyoto potter stayed behind in Kanazawa in 1666, and the Raku family sent a glaze north with him, one built for the cold. Eleven generations later, that same amber glaze still catches the light.
Two kokeshi, eighty years apart. Same face, different hands. The story of the Sakurai family and five generations of Naruko tradition.
Some supplier relationships take years to build. In Osaka I have a meeting over tea and chawan pieces that never reach any public market. Day two of my Sourcing Week in Japan series in Kyoto and Okayama.
This is where the week begins. A early morning flight, a heavy bag, and the first market of the trip: Kobo-san at Toji Temple, Kyoto, at 5:30 in the morning. Day one of my Sourcing Week in Japan series in Kyoto and Okayama.
This is Hotei, the laughing god of contentment, made in soft Hagi-yaki. Hagi ware made by the hand of potter Okada Yutaka. He holds a single piece of incense. After that piece is placed near the charcoal, he sits empty for the rest of the session. Japan put its finest craft into this moment of emptying, and then into the silence after.
Before you taste the tea, you hold the bowl. Weight, diameter, the way the foot sits in your palm: these are not secondary details. They are the bowl. On what I look for when I source chawan in Japan, and why size tells you more than the glaze ever will.
A kokeshi placed well in a room is more powerful than five grouped without thought. Here is what I have learned about height, background, and the quiet effect of giving one figure enough space to simply stand.
Every time I return from Japan, I carry objects built around a ritual. Not decorative pieces, but things that were made to slow things down. This is what I look for in each one, and why.
Hagi-yaki has been made in western Japan for over 400 years. What makes it special is what happens after you buy it. The bowl changes with every cup of tea you drink from it. That is why hagi-yaki is so loveable.
Held at an angle, this chawan catches the light differently every time. The pale, crackled glaze runs from a soft off-white into a warm, almost blush pink where it thins over the clay, a color Hagi potters call karahai, and it only appears where the firing has gone exactly right. The rim tilts and dips ever so slightly, a wall that never quite settles into a perfect circle, and that small imperfection is what makes it sit so naturally in the hand. It is a bowl built to be picked up, turned, and looked at again.
This bowl carries the tomobako signature of Matsuura Mugen, founder of the Shōunzan-gama kiln in Hagi, built on the very ground where Hagi-yaki itself began centuries ago. Mugen's work grew out of the tradition of Miwa Kyūwa, one of the defining masters of Hagi ware and a holder of Japan's Living National Treasure designation, and that lineage shows in the quiet, unforced warmth of this glaze. Its wide, shallow shape is a natsu-jawan, a summer bowl, made so the tea cools a little faster in the warmer months, which makes this the moment to bring it into use rather than let it wait. A signed, boxed chawan from this kiln is not something that turns up often outside Japan.
Hagi ware isn't meant to stay the same. Read how it grows with you, in my journal.