Makers · 作家
Who made your pot?
Turn a Japanese pot over and there is usually a mark. It is the most useful thing on the vessel and the hardest to read from outside Japan. These pages set out who the makers were, what their marks say, and where each fact comes from.
典拠 Method
Sourced, not assembled
Most of what circulates in English about Japanese pot makers has been copied from site to site until nobody can say where it began. We started again. Every profile here is checked against 盆器大図鑑 Bonki Daizukan, the standard Japanese survey of bonsai ware, and the page reference is printed at the foot of each entry.
Where a claim cannot be traced, we leave it out and say so. That is why some entries are shorter than they could be.
Tokoname · 常滑
Koyo
鴻陽
Juko
樹晃
Shuho
秀峰 / 義村陶園
Shibakatsu
柴勝
In progress
Twenty-one marks so far
These entries are the beginning of a longer reference. More makers are being checked and added — and photographs of the marks themselves, taken from pots passing through our own hands, will follow.
If you have a pot with a mark you cannot read, we will tell you what it says.