Tea Jar

Shigaraki Valley is the location of a cluster of individual kilns whose domestic ceramics—mainly unassuming utilitarian storage jars—are customarily associated with the celebrated Six Old Kilns ceramic traditions of Japan. Production there has continued unbroken from the twelfth century to the present day.

Shigaraki ware has a distinctive gritty surface texture caused by gravel, burst air pockets, and beads of fused feldspar in its poorly refined clay. This coarseness and the patches of natural ash glazes that form spontaneously on the clay surfaces during firing in the kiln came to be greatly admired by Japanese tea-masters in the sixth century.

Shigariki jars typically did not carry seals naming the potter or place of manufacture until the seventeenth century, when they began to be used for more important Tea Ceremony ware. The prominent seal on the high neck of this later example, which was designed to hold tea leaves, confirms that this piece was made expressly for use in the upscale tea market. Its style reflects the tea-master’s aesthetic for natural and rustic forms in many ways, and especially so in the carefully arranged "accidental" drops of a darker glaze on the front of the vessel, below the impressed seal.