Seto Ware — Seto Clay and the Ceramics of OUJIGAMA

What is Seto ware?

Seto ware (Seto-yaki) is the collective name for the ceramics made in and around the city of Seto in Aichi Prefecture. Seto is counted among Japan's Six Ancient Kilns, and it was one of the very few places in medieval Japan producing glazed stoneware — as early as the Kamakura period, in the thirteenth century.

What sets Seto apart is that it makes both stoneware and porcelain. Until the Edo period Seto was a stoneware town; when porcelain techniques arrived in the early nineteenth century, the older stoneware came to be called hongyo-yaki ("the original trade") and the new porcelain shinsei-yaki ("the new manufacture").

About hongyo-yaki →

Seto clay

The ground beneath Seto is formed by the Seto Group, strata laid down between roughly ten and two million years ago, rich in fine clay and silica sand.

The clay is low in iron and fires white. This white body shows glaze colours cleanly and makes a white glaze such as Shino look whiter still — one reason Seto's ceramics look the way they do.

Shino glaze and Seto

Shino is a feldspar-based glaze. Applied thickly, it fires to a soft, plump white, with touches of reddish hiiro ("scarlet") where the glaze is thinner. It is one of the glazes most closely associated with the Seto and Mino kilns.

Shino is the centre of our work at OUJIGAMA. With white, pink and blue Shino, we keep exploring new expressions of this glaze.

The surface of white Shino glaze — White Shino

The surface of pink Shino glaze — Pink Shino

The surface of blue Shino glaze — Blue Shino

OUJIGAMA and Seto ware

OUJIGAMA makes its ceramics from Seto clay and natural glazes, in its workshop in Higashibora-cho, Seto.
Since the mid-Edo period it has been a hongyo-yaki studio, making suribachi mortars and jars.

If you would like to see and handle the work in person, the gallery beside our workshop is open to visitors.

Visiting the gallery and workshop →　About OUJIGAMA →