窯と産地

Reference · 窯と産地

Kilns & places

The kilns, workshops and places connected with makers in our index, including production in Tokoname, Mino, Kyoto and Echizen, and training in Seto and Imari.

00 · Scope

Where these pots were made

This page follows the makers in our index. For the makers included here, it sets out where the work was done and what the kiln or workshop is called.

A place name, a kiln name and a maker’s name are three different things, and on some pots they do not line up. Each entry links to the maker page it comes from.

01 · Place, kiln and maker

Three names that are not interchangeable

On the pots presented here, the following are documented separately.

A kiln name that is not a person. Yamafusa is a kiln; the potter is 鯉江一房. Kōhō is the name of a kiln in Mino and of its moulded line, not a maker.

A kiln name that covers more than one hand. 越前文山窯 is a kiln name rather than the maker’s own mark, and work by another hand has come out of it under that name.

A maker’s own mark beside the kiln’s. On one Eimei foot the kiln name is cut into the clay with a point, with his own stamped seal below it.

These examples show why a name on the foot has to be read in the context of its particular kiln or workshop. They are not a rule for reading other kilns’ names.

02 · 常滑

Tokoname

Izumiya kiln 和泉屋窯 — Zengo

The kiln’s proper name is the Izumiya kiln; Zengo is a nickname, and it comes from a misreading of the mark. The mark 銭子窯製 was copied from Chinese ware and stayed, so the mark does not make a pot Chinese — it is this kiln’s own.

In 2006, the kiln was working almost entirely unglazed, it had a deep stock of moulds, and its clay was chiefly shidei. In 2006, udei was called ibushi locally in Tokoname, and a new pot in it did not look new.

There was a second Izumiya pottery in Tokoname, 松萱窯. In 2006 it had suspended pot production.

Yamaaki Pottery 山秋製陶所

The workshop began in 1920 as one man working on his own. In 2006 it was recorded as the largest maker of high-grade Tokoname bonsai pots. In 2006, it fired in one of the largest gas kilns in Tokoname — a bell kiln, with a name for steady firing.

Two bodies are credited separately. 山秋焼 is the first generation’s: Tokoname clay mixed with chamotte and sawdust and fired to an open, porous state. 常滑烏泥 is the second generation’s: Chinese zisha blended with Tokoname clay.

The first generation has his own page. He modernised the kiln and incorporated the workshop.

Yamafusa Pottery 山房鯉江製陶所

Yamafusa is a kiln, not a person; the potter is 鯉江一房.

The turn came in the middle of the 1980s. Before it the kiln was known for press-moulded production ware; from then on the finishing became the point. None of the five examples currently documented here is unglazed.

Gyozan Nakano 中野行山

He trained under 久田佳山 and set up his own kiln in 1972. Around 1976 he completed a clay of his own, 曙 — a low-iron clay blended into the high-iron clay of Tokoname.

In 1984 he moved from an electric kiln to gas; the clay being dug in Tokoname had changed. In 2006, he was using a small kiln with a steep temperature gradient, to court an effect that would not repeat.

Yōzan kiln 耀山

He had been a forming hand in Tokoname and established his own pottery business in 1963. In the Shōwa 50s — 1975 to 1984 — his son Eimei joined the workshop.

On the examples discussed here, the Yōzan name identifies the kiln rather than an individual hand.

In 2007 he was making almost nothing.

Koyo Toen 鴻陽陶園

In 1970 he opened his own kiln as Koyo Toen. His work also includes tableware, ceramic objects and wall tile. The Koyo and Juko names are associated with the same kiln.

One documented impression carries the maker’s mark with the kiln’s square stamp beneath it. His green is described as calling to mind Heian Tofukuji’s.

Yoshimura Toen 義村陶園 — Shuho

Founded in 1923 as Kataoka Toen, and re-established in 1973 as Yoshimura Toen. The fourth generation of Kataoka Toen succeeded to the name 秀峰 in 1974. The workshop generation and the name are counted separately: how many have held the name is not established.

The workshop’s known work ranges from hand-built and coil-built pots to press-moulded ones.

Also in Tokoname

Bigei opened his own kiln in 1975. That date describes his career, not when the 美芸 mark began to be used.

Ikko began firing glazed small pots in a gas kiln in 1978.

For Eimei, the two-colour result of a single glaze is explained by how the pot sat in the gas kiln: one side faced the flame and the other did not.

On one Ikko pot, a single glaze fired in two colours where it lay thin and where it lay thick; the gas kiln was identified as the cause.

Shibakatsu’s work ranges from unglazed Tokoname clays to glazed pots.

Senshu’s pots are made singly, and no two come out quite the same colour.

03 · 美濃・市之倉

Mino and Ichinokura

Kōhō kiln 光峰窯 — Ichinokura Sekishu 市之倉石州

The kiln was set up in 1955 at Ichinokura in Tajimi, making sake and tea wares.

From about 1970 it made bonsai pots with moulds, in numbers, and those carry 光峰 — the name of the kiln and of that line, not a person. From about 1972 the founder also made pots by hand, one at a time, and those carry 市之倉石州. The two names are not exclusive. One pot is identified as a joint work, 石州・光峰合作, and a boxed pot can carry both.

The founder died in November 2006. The kiln did not close with him. In 2024 it was trading as 光峰窯水口製陶所 in Ichinokura, and its principal business was sake ware.

04 · 京都と焼成環境

Kyoto and firing

Heian Tofukuji 平安東福寺

He had no kiln of his own and used rented kilns throughout. That was possible because Kyoto had a division of labour around its potteries, where firing could be bought as a service. He formed the pots; the firing happened in a shared climbing kiln.

The heat could not be counted on, and glaze tone and finish vary a great deal from pot to pot — two Tofukuji pots of the same glaze looking quite unlike each other is normal. Kiln-change is frequent enough in his work to be treated as a category of its own; the borrowed kiln accounts for some of it, and he also appears to have compounded glazes to court the effect.

Around 1938 a pot-making society was founded and its kiln stood inside a temple garden. That kiln ran about six years, until a wartime clearance closed it in 1944.

Tofukuji II 二代平安東福寺

He brought in an electric kiln. He mixed the body to his father’s formula, but the glaze materials were not the same and neither was the kiln — so the pots did not come out of the fire looking quite like the old ones.

05 · Other places

Places of training

Where a maker trained is not where the pots were made. Two places appear on these pages in that role.

Seto. Reiho studied ceramics at Tokoname high school, then took the advanced course at Seto, then researched glaze at the Seto branch of the Nagoya industrial testing institute. Eimei researched glaze and ceramics at the same Seto branch in 1980.

Imari. Ishida Shoseki went to Imari to learn the wheel and painting, and her painting sits inside the old-Imari tradition.

Here, Seto and Imari are mentioned as places of training, not as the stated production places of these pots.

99 · Continue by maker