作家と落款

Makers · 作家

Who made your pot?

Turn a Japanese pot over and there is usually a mark. It can be one of the most useful clues on the vessel, and the hardest to read from outside Japan. These pages set out who the makers were, what their documented and observed marks may establish, and what remains uncertain.

典拠 Method

Documented, not guessed

Some English-language information about Japanese bonsai-pot makers lacks traceable support. These profiles distinguish documented facts, observed examples and unresolved points, and where a reading is not confirmed we say so.

Where a claim cannot be traced, we leave it out and say so. That is why some entries are shorter than they could be.

Kyoto · 京都

Heian Tofukuji

平安東福寺

A comb-maker who turned to clay at forty and never owned a kiln. Never owned a kiln.

7 documented marks

Tofukuji II

二代平安東福寺

Took the name at fifty-three after a career in haulage. By his own account, ten years before his pots came near his father’s.

2 documented marks

Tsukinowa Yūsen

月之輪涌泉

A Kyoto porcelain painter who began making bonsai pots for his own trees in his fifties.

Two recorded mark forms

Tokoname · 常滑

Koyo

鴻陽

Left tile-making for pots on a nurseryman’s advice. A glaze specialist whose green recalls Tofukuji’s.

5 documented marks

Juko

樹晃

Koyo’s son. Agriculture postgraduate turned potter, working the family green glaze.

1 documented mark

Shuho

秀峰 / 義村陶園

Glazed ware, from shohin pots to vessels beyond ninety centimetres. Green-glazed work was singled out in the 2006 account.

4 documented marks

Shibakatsu

柴勝

Small pots, over five hundred variations. Two documented impressions are associated with earlier production and later handmade work; distinguishing them requires the pot in hand.

2 documented marks

Hattori

服部

A ceramics graduate of Koblenz. Glazed small pots made with moulds by a maker who forms, glazes and fires his own work.

1 documented mark

Bigei

美芸

Shaded shudei small pots. The recorded dates describe his career, not the period the mark was used.

1 documented mark

Zengo

銭号

Recorded in 2006 as among Tokoname’s longest-running bonsai-pot kilns — and its mark is a copied Chinese one.

1 documented mark

Ikko

一弘 / 壱興 / 壹興

Tokoname’s glaze man. Three written forms documented here belong to the same maker; two are partnership marks.

3 documented marks

Juodo Shosen

十王堂松泉 / 山秋

The first generation of Yamaaki. No impression of his own mark is documented.

3 documented marks

Yamaaki

山秋 / 松泉

Two lines under one name — and the mark tells you which one you are holding.

4 documented marks

Eimei

英明 / 清水英明

One glaze, two colours — the side that faces the flame and the side that does not.

1 documented mark

Gyozan Nakano

中野行山

Some of the four documented marks distinguish moulded from handmade work.

4 documented marks

Reiho

黎鳳

Many of the Tokoname makers presented here worked in unglazed clay. He went the other way — after the Chinese glazes.

2 documented marks

Senshu

仙舟 / 小澤数雄

Shūzan’s only successor — using Shūzan’s own clay and firing. The mark decides.

1 documented mark

Yamafusa

山房 / 鯉江一房

A kiln, not a person. Its marks give you the grade on an old pot and the era on a new one.

4 documented marks

Yozan

耀山 / 清水正和

A name that outlasted the hand behind it. From the Shōwa 50s, father and son worked together under the Yōzan name; the mark alone does not identify the hand.

2 documented marks

Mino · 美濃

Sekishu

市之倉石州 / 水口元夫

Two names on one kiln’s pots, and the reason for the split is known.

4 documented marks

Koho

光峰 / 光峰窯水口製陶所

A line, not a person — the moulded pots from the kiln whose hand-made work is signed Sekishu.

1 documented mark

Seto · 瀬戸

Mazan

真山 / 寺畑陶園

Moulded plant pots first; handmade bonsai pots from about 1985.

1 documented mark

Mikawa · 三河

Sanshū Ichiyō

三琇一陽

An oval water tray with gently flaring walls, sometimes called the Ichiyō type.

4 documented marks

Echizen · 越前

Echizen Bunzan

越前文山

A nurseryman who began potting the year he opened his nursery — and a plum that may be a bow to Kenzan.

2 documented marks

Elsewhere · その他

Fujikake Yūzan

藤掛雄山

Several documented mark forms and dated series.

Higuchi Takeshi

樋口武

Several documented incised marks.

Zeko

是好 / 中村是好

An actor who painted pots. He commonly signed in the painted face; a second confirmed mark, 矩, appears on the base.

3 documented marks

Shuzan

舟山 / 鈴木春司

A banker who built his first kiln at forty. One of his five documented marks is a centimetre tall.

5 documented marks

Ishida Shoseki

石田祥石 / 石田豊美

A satsuki grower who started making pots at fifty, to suit her own plants.

1 documented mark

Masashi Furumoto

古本正志 / フクダ工房

Four recorded pots, one idea — and the carving is carried onto the underside.

1 documented mark

Keiun

桂雲

The foot bears a written mark rather than a stamp. One hand-cut 桂雲 mark has been observed; it is not established as the only form.

1 documented mark

In progress

Documented marks, with new examples added as they are confirmed.

These entries are the beginning of a longer reference.

If you have a pot with a mark you cannot read, we will tell you what it says.

Ask what a mark says