Japanese Ceramics & Pottery

The Japanese have created ceramics and pottery since the Neolithic times. Many Japanese ceramics like porcelain pottery incorporated Chinese and Korean aesthetics. However, even after the height of porcelain popularity in the Eastern and Western world, Japan still maintained a preference for unglazed, imperfect, and raw earthenware that exhibited deliberate impressions of a maker’s hand.

The first earthenware in Japan, created around the 6th century B.C., was Jomon pottery These were characterized by hand coiled decorations and impressions. Jomon pottery was never made by wheel and solely formed by hand from stacking coils on top of coils, and later smoothing out parts of the surface. It wasn’t until the 3rd or 4th century that, with the arrival of the Chinese in Japan, the potter’s wheel makes an appearance in Japanese history.

In keeping with the Japanese wabi-sabi aesthetic, many Japanese potters and ceramists still rejected the use of the potting wheel in favor of imperfect and unfinished looking pieces. To emphasize this rough and raw quality, many of such Japanese ceramic works were very simply painted and minimally decorated.

Quick Facts

• In order to fit a more heavy duty workload, the Japanese tended to avoid glazing ceramic ware for funerals, food storage, and kitchen pots. The few that were glazed were most often coated in one simple awaji green color
• Seto-mono, later becoming known as the generic standard of ceramic pottery, imitated Chinese pottery and glazing techniques using ash, iron black, feldspar white, and copper green glazes
• Japanese Raku pottery is also particularly popular and well-known to this day. Developed in the 1500s for ceremony and Buddhism, it is characterized by metallic-colored glazes and many small cracks created by rapid changes in temperature. These cracks are valued as part of the beauty of the ceramic object