Ikebana Art Part II: Patterns Became Freer as Time Marched On

Numerous different ikebana schools exist, and the discipline has encouraged collectors to pick up interesting yakimono vessels to pursue it. Moribana refers to what some people call heaped-up flowers. Artists who trained in the moribana school put a good deal of emphasis on naturalistic landscape designs.

Most moribana designs are placed in small vases that […]

Tokkuri Sake Flasks are Part of a Unique Yakimono Culture

The term tokkuri refers to the server that comes with a sake set. More often than not a tokkuri has a bulbous body that forms a tapered narrow neck as one’s eye moves up from the center of the object. Nevertheless, they come in a variety of different shapes.

Heated sake is generally warmed by […]

Ikebana Art Part I: The Beauty of Simple Floral Patterns

Ikebana art consists of truly beautiful formalized Japanese flower arranging, and many of these arrangements find themselves in equally lovely yakimono ceramics. While the term initially applied only to formalized flower arranging, ikebana art later encompassed all the different types of Japanese floral art. Several major schools are around in the modern era, but […]

Seto Ware Took a Journey When it Wasn’t Safe to be a Potter

As the name might suggest Seto yakimono ware originally came from the village of Seto. One of the Six Ancient Kilns was located in Seto. Since it was such an important part of ceramics history, the village actually lends its name to the generic Japanese word for pottery.

Numerous Japanese speakers use the term setomono […]

The Rather Rich History of Multihued Oribe Yakimono Ware

The name of Oribe Yaki is rather unique. It’s actually named after a single individual. Furuta Shigenari (1544-1615) was a warrior who once served Toyotomi Hideyoshi and Oda Nobunaga. He became the foremost tea master when his teacher Sen no Rikyu perished.

Furuta taught the ceremony to the shogun Tokugawa Hidetada and gained the honorific […]

Cherry Blossom Motifs Have Long Dominated Japanese Art

As one might imagine due to their importance as a national symbol, cherry blossoms feature quite prominently in Japanese art. When Utagawa Hiroshige painted the Fuji Sanju-Rokkei in the 1850s, he was working with material that Katsushika Hokusai had already touched previously. His versions of the scenes perhaps made cherry blossoms that much more […]

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