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二 · Clay — Arita, Saga

Arita ware

Japan made no porcelain at all until a Korean potter found a white hill here.

5 pieces on the shelf ↓
Arita ware — Arita, Saga
Arita, Saga · The first porcelain made in Japan, c. 1616

Until the early 1600s this country made stoneware. Porcelain — white, thin, translucent, ringing when struck — came in from China and Korea and was expensive. Then a Korean potter brought to Kyushu after Hideyoshi's invasions, known here as Ri Sanpei, found a mountain of porcelain stone at Izumiyama on the edge of Arita, and Japan began making its own.

Within forty years it was an export. The Chinese kilns at Jingdezhen collapsed with the fall of the Ming, the Dutch East India Company had European orders and no porcelain to fill them, and Arita filled the gap. It shipped out through the harbour at Imari down the coast — which is why Europe called it Imari for three hundred years, naming the port instead of the town.

Arita ware — from the left
From the left
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How it works
  1. Write to the house. A person in Fukuoka replies, usually within a day or two.
  2. When a piece is agreed, the house sends you a private payment link, and you pay by card.
  3. It ships from Japan.

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Arita ware — at the workshop
At the workshop
How it is made
  1. 磁石Jiseki

    Porcelain stone from Izumiyama is crushed and washed until it is white clay.

  2. 成形・素焼きSeikei / Suyaki

    Thrown or moulded, dried, then bisque-fired.

  3. 下絵付けShita-etsuke

    Cobalt blue is painted straight onto the bisque, under the glaze.

  4. 本焼成Hon-shōsei

    Glazed and fired near 1300°C. The blue turns from grey to blue in the kiln.

  5. 上絵付けUwa-etsuke

    Red, green and gold go on over the finished glaze and are fired again, low.

Three manners came out of one valley. Sometsuke is cobalt painted under a clear glaze, blue on white. Kakiemon leaves a milky white body mostly empty and puts a little persimmon-red, green and gold in one corner of it, and was copied at Meissen, Chantilly and Chelsea within a generation. Kinrande is dense red and gold over the whole surface, made for people who wanted to be seen owning it.

And one kiln up the valley sold nothing at all. Nabeshima, the domain's own kiln at Ōkawachiyama, worked behind a guarded gate and made only gifts — for the shogun, for other lords. The rejects were smashed rather than sold. It is the most restrained porcelain in Japan, and for two hundred years no ordinary person could buy a piece.

The white hill is still there, and still being quarried, four hundred years in.

Arita ware — from the right
From the right
Walk around it
Arita ware — FrontArita ware — LeftArita ware — BackArita ware — Right
Notes
First fired
c. 1616 — the first porcelain in Japan
The stone
Izumiyama, at the edge of the town
Why "Imari"
Europe named the port it shipped from
Nabeshima
The domain kiln — gifts only, never sold
About the place

A narrow valley in Saga with a white hill at one end of it. The hill is Izumiyama, the porcelain stone found around 1616, and everything else in the town follows from it: the kilns, the painting studios, the tunnel walls built out of broken saggars, the shrine with torii made of porcelain.

Arita · Porcelain →Ask us to find one →The Southern Islands · By region →

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