Are all items on Kaiko & Co authentic Japanese pieces?

Yes, all items in our shop are carefully curated and genuinely sourced from Japan. They are authentic vintage and antique pieces, each carrying its own history and craftsmanship.

What makes vintage Japanese ceramics so unique?

Japanese ceramics embody the philosophy of wabi-sabi: finding beauty in imperfection, simplicity, and natural forms. Each piece is unique, crafted or finished by hand by traditional artisans.

How are delicate items like ceramics and matcha bowls packaged for shipping?

We package every item with extreme care using protective, high-quality wrapping materials to ensure your unique Japanese treasure arrives safely and undamaged via tracked shipping.

What is the estimated delivery time for orders?

Orders within Europe are typically processed and delivered within 2 to 5 business days, complete with Track & Trace details. International shipping times vary depending on the destination.

Can I return an item if it does not meet my expectations?

Yes, you have the right to request a return within 14 days of receiving your order. Because these are unique vintage items, we kindly ask that items are returned in their original condition.

Meet the maker: Shibaoka Tōsendō, Kōzan-gama

MakerCeramic maker

27 Aug

Written By Hannah

Shibaoka Tōsendō, working under the kiln name Kōzan-gama, has fired Bizen-yaki in Imbe since 1912, now in its third generation. Alongside its traditional yakishime output, the kiln is known for a rare blue-green ao-Bizen effect and, more recently, for a small ceramic robot mascot made by one of the current generation's sons.

Hand of Shibaoka Masashi, third-generation Kōzan, reaching for a Bizen-yaki piece with hidasuki scarlet flame marks at Kōzan-gama kiln, Imbe Okayama Japan — *Shibaoka Masashi, third-generation Kōzan, reaching for a hidasuki-marked piece at Kōzan-gama.*

Who is behind Kōzan-gama?

Shibaoka Tōsendō (柴岡陶泉堂) was founded in Imbe, Bizen, in 1912 (Taishō 1) by the first-generation Shibaoka Kōzan (柴岡香山). The kiln relocated to its current site in 1931. It has stayed in family hands ever since: the second-generation Kōzan, Shibaoka Tsuyoshi (柴岡強), began working the kiln in 1937 and took over its name and management after the first generation's death, continuing to work under it for over fifty years. In 1983 he became the first person in Bizen ceramics recognised as a Traditional Craftsman (伝統工芸士) specifically for this kiln.

The third-generation Kōzan, Shibaoka Masashi (柴岡正志), began working at the kiln in 1966 and formally took the Kōzan name in 1998, following his father's death. He received his own Traditional Craftsman recognition in 2008, and, like his father before him, has continued to focus specifically on ao-Bizen work. On a visit to the kiln, Masashi himself was at the kiln mouth during an active firing, and one of his two sons was working alongside him.

His two sons, Shibaoka Chikara (柴岡力) and Shibaoka Hisashi (柴岡久), joined the family workshop in 1995 and 2001 respectively, and both now work as recognised Bizen-yaki artists in their own right, producing both traditional forms and more contemporary pieces alongside the kiln's established output. Hisashi's work was selected in 2016 for The Wonder500, a Japanese government programme identifying 500 regional craft products for international promotion, and he has since collaborated on ceramics projects with Starbucks Japan and Panasonic, work that sits well outside the kiln's traditional output but grew directly out of it.

The kiln has built several noborigama on its grounds over the decades, including new climbing kilns in 1971, 1981, and, at a second location at Sen'yō-ga-hara, in 2009. The 2009 kiln, the one most recently active, held its first firing that same year. In 2012 the kiln marked its hundredth anniversary with commemorative exhibitions at department stores in Okayama and Kurashiki.

What sets their work apart

Work from this kiln spans a genuinely wide range: vases, tea ceremony objects, sake ware, tableware, storage jars, and even ceramic lamps, reflecting the kiln's stated aim of combining an unpretentious, useful form with the warmth and natural beauty of clay and fire. The clay body tends toward a dense, dark red-brown to grey-purple ground, consistent with standard Bizen hiyose clay, with sangiri and goma effects both well represented across the kiln's output. Where ao-Bizen appears, the surface takes on a cool blue-green to grey cast rather than the more common warm reddish tones, a genuinely distinctive marker for this kiln's work specifically. The kiln's showroom also displays the more playful, figurative side of its current generation, including the BIZENYAKI-ROBOT mascot, alongside the classical yakishime pieces.

The Bizen-Yaki robot

Three Bizen-yaki ceramic robot mascots with metal bolt joints by Shibaoka Chikara, displayed at Shibaoka Tōsendō shop, Imbe Okayama Japan — *The BIZENYAKI-ROBOT, Shibaoka Chikara's mascot creation, lined up in the shop display in Imbe.*

Yes, you have read this right. The current generation has taken the kiln in a genuinely playful direction. Shibaoka Chikara (柴岡力) created the BIZENYAKI-ROBOT, a small mascot figure with a Bizen-fired ceramic head and body, hand-assembled afterward with visible screws and rubber-tube joints. The robot has become something of a fixture, kept on display at the front of the shop and recognised locally as a piece of the kiln's personality rather than a curiosity. Chikara and his brother Hisashi have both continued in this vein alongside their traditional work, producing figurative and contemporary pieces, animals, dinosaurs, robots, that sit deliberately apart from the kiln's classical output.

How to recognise a genuine piece

Pieces from this kiln are typically signed on the base with the kiln's registered mark, a stylised triangular or fan-shaped stamp.
Higher-end or gift pieces may come with an original tomobako inscribed with the piece type and signed by the maker, sometimes accompanied by the kiln's own paper documentation.

Signatures and shiori of Shibaoka Tōsendō, Kōzan-gama in our archive

Meet the Shibaoka Tōsendō, Kōzan-gama items in collection

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Front view of two Shibaoka Tōsendō Bizen-yaki tokkuri vases on a tatami mat with silvery-blue and reddish-brown firing marks.

Pair of Bizen-yaki tokkuri vases, Shibaoka Tōsendō, Kōzan-gama kiln, Imbe

€85.00

Two small teardrop vases, narrow at the neck and full through the shoulder, standing close enough together that they read as a pair without being identical. One leans toward deep aubergine with a soft silver mist rolling across the front, almost metallic where the light catches it. The other runs cooler still, a wash of silvery blue-grey shifting into warm rust low on the body. Neither would look complete alone. Together they hold a conversation, one leaning warm, the other leaning bright.

Both carry the maker's mark of Shibaoka Tōsendō, working under the kiln name Kōzan-gama in Imbe since 1912. The kiln has stayed in one family for three generations, currently the third-generation Kōzan, Shibaoka Masashi, working alongside his sons Chikara and Hisashi. A pair like this, thrown at the same time and fired side by side in the same noborigama, is a small, physical record of one firing at a kiln that has kept its own fire burning for over a century.

→ 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.

Physical examination of the seal, construction, and any award stickers on the pieces themselves
Information shared by dealers and specialists in Japan at the time of purchase
Confirmed directly by the Shibaoka family during a visit to the kiln
Official kiln website: shibaoka-tousendou.com, specifically the Artist page and Hisashi Shibaoka's profile
Bizen Pottery Cooperative (岡山県備前焼陶友会) maker profile: touyuukai.jp, citing Bizen-yaki Sakka Kamamoto Meikan (備前焼作家・窯元名鑑), Sanyo Shimbun, 2011
Bizen Tourism Association spot listing with detailed kiln timeline: bizen-kanko.com
Bizen Pottery Town Project Council, background on the kiln's ao-Bizen tradition: bizen-town.okayama.co
Okayama Prefecture tourism feature on the BIZENYAKI-ROBOT, created by Shibaoka Chikara: okayama-kanko.jp

→Ash-glazed stoneware like this asks for the same gentle handling as any glazed ceramic, rinsed by hand, dried fully, kept away from sudden temperature changes. Read the full guide here
→ 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.
→ The styles of Bizen-yaki: hidasuki, goma, sangiri explained. Read the guide.

Browse all tea ceremony items

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Pair of Bizen-yaki tokkuri vases, Shibaoka Tōsendō, Kōzan-gama kiln, Imbe

€85.00

Deguchi Eiji chawan with a rustic, wood-fired exterior, transitioning from deep reddish-brown and black to crackled, off-white glaze.

Wood-fired chawan by Deguchi Eiji, Kakuzan-gama, with tomobako, Shōwa period

€315.00

There is a moment, turning this bowl slowly for the first time, where you stop trusting your own eyes. From one side, the glaze looks almost calm, a pale, crackled white. Look closer and that white is covered edge to edge in a fine web of cracks, catching the light like a cracked windshield. Turn it a few degrees and that same surface has turned to rust, deep orange bleeding into near black at the rim. Then you tip it, and the inside pools into a deep, mossy green touched with gold, a colour neither side of the outside ever hints at. Somewhere along the thick, generous rim sits a small patch that has turned an unexplained grey-blue, rougher under the thumb than the glaze around it. This is not a bowl that settled on one thing.

This chawan was made at the Kakuzan-gama in Ayabe, a kiln built in 1959 at the headquarters of the Ōmoto religious organisation, and it is signed by Deguchi Eiji, who married into the family that founded Ōmoto and served as its Sōchō, its director, from 1958 to 1962. He was not a professional potter by trade. He was someone close to the centre of a movement that treated making things by hand as part of its own philosophy, working in an ash-glaze tradition brought to the kiln by its founder, the Bizen master Kaneshige Sozan. This bowl is what that looked like when it left his hands. A signed, boxed chawan from a maker with this kind of documented history rarely surfaces outside Japan.

→ Curious about the glaze on this matcha bowl? One glaze, three lives: a wood-fired chawan from a kiln built by a religion is in my journal.

Hagi-yaki natsu-jawan matcha bowl beside signed tomobako wooden box, tatami mat, ukiyoe print background, Japan

(sold) Hagi-yaki summer chawan with karahai glow, signed by Matsuura Mugen, Shōwa period

€325.00

Notice: This chawan has found a new home. If you are looking for something similar, scroll down.

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.

Shino-yaki chawan, carved glaze pattern, Han'emon-gama kiln Mino Japan

Shino-yaki chawan by a Katō family potter, Han'emon-gama kiln, with tomobako and shiori Shōwa period

€255.00

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.

Bizen-yaki tokkuri by Isezaki Sō on its wrapping cloth, front view showing the olive to aubergine ash glaze

Bizen-yaki tokkuri signed by Isezaki Sō, original tomobako

€180.00

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.

Unavailable

(sold) Kuro chawan with carved cherry blossom, signed by Okugawa Katsuomi with tomobako, late Shōwa period

€235.00

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.

Ao-Oribe chawan with painted figures and vine scrollwork, Mino ware from Shōwa period

from €155.00

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.

E-Karatsu kōgō with painted plum branch signed Inoue Koji with original tomobako and shiori documentation Japan displayed on tatami mat, lid open with incense inside

E-Karatsu kōgō with plum branch, signed by Inoue Koji, with original tomobako box and shiori documentation

€385.00

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.

Shira-hagi chawan Taizan kiln white Hagi ware matcha bowl displayed on wooden plank with original tomobako, Shōwa period ca. 1960 to 1975 Japan, ukiyoe print in background

Shira-hagi chawan, Taizan kiln, white Hagi ware matcha bowl, original tomobako, Shōwa period, ca. 1960 to 1975

€255.00

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.

Bizen Yakishime chawan named Tekifu with budō-iro fire effect, signed by Gekifūsei with original wooden tomobako, late Shōwa period

€285.00

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.

Aka-raku chawan with oxidation glaze, signed Ōno Kyūkō, late Shōwa period

€95.00

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.

E-Karatsu yunomi set of five with hand-painted bamboo motif Maehira Tōgeien displayed on wooden plank ukiyoe print in background, late Shōwa period Japan, next to chasen whisk

Set of five e-Karatsu yunomi with bamboo motif, Maehira Tōgeien, late Shōwa

€89.00

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.

Tenmoku matcha bowl by Mizue Katsukazu, drip glaze chawan with bamboo chasen

Tenmoku drip glaze chawan signed by Mizue Katsukazu, 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.

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.

Hagi-yaki kogo shaped as Hotei laughing god signed Okada Yutaka warm white glaze with tomobako displayed on tatami mat next to whisk for size, Shōwa period Japan

Hagi-yaki kogo in the shape of Hotei, signed by Okada, with tomobako from 1970-1980

€235.00

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.

Kinma lacquer natsume Sakamoto Setsusai red and black carved decoration with wooden tomobako, Shōwa period Japan next to chasen

Kinma lacquer natsume by Sakamoto Sessai, with signed wooden tomobako box, Shōwa period

€330.00

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.

Set of five Hagi-yaki yunomi in original tomobako box, signed, Taizan kiln, shira-hagi glaze, Shōwa period

€260.00

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.

Hagi-yaki sencha set by Kondō Mamoru, Kusugi kiln, Shōwa to Heisei period

€285.00

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.

Hagi-yaki sencha tea set Hirose Tanga Nanshu Tenpōzan kiln kyusu and six cups with original tomobako, late Shōwa period Japan, displayed with shiori on tatami mat with ukiyoe print in backgroun (Copy)

Hagi-yaki sencha tea set by Hirose Tanga, Tenpōzan kiln, kyusu and 6 cups with tomobako, late Shōwa (Copy)

€185.00

Six cups and a teapot, and the whole set reads as one breath. The glaze moves between pale blue-grey and soft salmon pink depending on where the light falls, and a fine web of craquelé runs across every surface.

Nothing is decorated. Nothing needs to be.

Sencha culture in Japan is quieter than the matcha ceremony but no less intentional. It is the daily practice of making something ordinary into something considered. Choosing the right pot, the right cup, the right temperature of water. Hagi ware has been part of that practice for over four centuries, prized for a clay body so porous and alive that the glaze slowly shifts in colour with each use.

A Hagi tea set does not stay the same. It becomes something over time.
→ Read how it grows with you, in my journal.

(coming soon) Black silk haori kimono jacket with peacock feather embroidery and kamon, unworn, Shōwa period

€0.00

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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Unavailable

(coming soon) Silk haori kimono jacket with mint green maple leaf weave and gold shibori, original himo, Shōwa period

€0.00

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.

👇

Unavailable

(coming soon) Meoto yunomi pair, Taizan kiln, Hagi-yaki, with tomobako box and shiori documentation, Shōwa - Heisei ca 1980-2000s

€0.00

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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Unavailable

(sold) Japanese Hagi-yaki yunomi meteo pair Mukuhara Yoshitoshi Furuhata-gama Showa

€125.00

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

Hagi-yaki chawan Moriwaki Fumitada warikodai foot warm white glaze with signed tomobako, Shōwa period Japan, held in hands by woman wearing haori with matcha whisk in chawan

Hagi-yaki chawan signed by Moriwaki Fumitada with warikodai and signed tomobako, Shōwa period

€255.00

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.

Japanese Kiyomizu Rokubei VI ikebana vase camellia tomobako Showa, held in hands by woman in haori jacket

Kiyomizu-yaki ikebana vase signed by Kiyomizu Rokubei VI, named "Shirotsubaki", with original tomobako and shiori documentation Shōwa period

€750.00

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.

Kyo-yaki chawan with yōhen glaze by Uno Tōru, signed, shown from above next to original tomobako, late Shōwa, interior view

Unavailable

(sold) Kyo-yaki chawan with yōhen glaze by Uno Tōru, signed, original tomobako, late Shōwa

€195.00

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.

Japanese celadon vase ice crackle glaze on wooden stand, by Tachikichi Kyoto Showa

Celadon vase with ice crackle glaze by Tachikichi, Kyoto, Shōwa period

€115.00

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.

Ōtani-yaki vase purple and blue glaze Mori Toki kiln Naruto with original studio sticker, late Shōwa period Japan, displayed on tatamimat

Ōtani-yaki vase with purple and blue glaze by Mori Toki kiln, Naruto, original studio sticker, late Shōwa period

€90.00

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.

Unavailable

(sold) Seto matcha chawan, madara-yu glaze, signed Matsubara Yasuhiro, with tomobako box and documentation, ca. 1970

€0.00

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.

Oni-Hagi-yaki chawan signed by Hirose Nanshū, founder of Tenpōzan kiln, with tomobako and shiori documentation, early Shōwa era

€325.00

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.

Hagi-yaki chawan Hirose Tanga Tenpōzan kiln with tomobako and shiori, Heisei era

Hagi-yaki chawan signed by Hirose Tanga, Tenpōzan kiln, with tomobako and documentation

€285.00

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.

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