HONGYO-YAKI
Hongyo-yaki
The stoneware that Seto has always called its "original trade".
The word "hongyo"
In Seto, stoneware — pottery made from clay rather than porcelain stone — is called hongyo-yaki.
In the late Edo period, porcelain techniques reached Seto. The new porcelain was called shinsei-yaki, "the new manufacture". By contrast, the stoneware that Seto had always made came to be called hongyo, "the original trade".
Hongyo-yaki, then, simply means the stoneware of Seto, as it has been made since the Kamakura period.
What hongyo-yaki kilns made
The hongyo-yaki kilns made the tools of daily life: suribachi mortars, storage jars, bowls, sake flasks and plates. These were not ornaments but working vessels, used in the kitchen and replaced when they broke.
The suribachi in particular came to represent Seto's stoneware. Durable clay and the skill of cutting the grooves inside carried Seto mortars across Japan.
OUJIGAMA and hongyo-yaki
OUJIGAMA was founded in the mid-Edo period as a hongyo-yaki studio. Records show it firing suribachi and jars in a climbing kiln.
After the move to a heavy-oil kiln in 1969, the suribachi remained at the centre of our work. Today we make them from san-sun to shaku-hachi — about 11 to 54 cm — in Shino and a range of other glazes.
About OUJIGAMA suribachi → Our kilns and history →
Related pages Seto ware / "Setomono" and the history of Seto ware / About OUJIGAMA