Kasama ware

Kasama ware is tied to the production area around Kasama City, Ibaraki Prefecture. The Kasama-yaki Cooperative has a city address at Kasama 2481-5, and the Ibaraki Ceramic Art Museum stands in Kasama Geijutsu no Mori Park. In one city, a producer organization, exhibitions, ceramics education, and vessels used for local ingredients keep the name Kasama connected to working clay rather than to a label alone.

The material base includes gairo-me clay and Kasama clay. The gairo-me clay is fine-grained and sticky, while Kasama clay contains iron; after firing, the body can take on a brown color, and the finished ware is described as strong and resistant to dirt. That brown body gives flowing glaze and layered glaze work a practical role: the surface carries the clay color, glaze thickness, and kiln heat together.

Earlier Kasama ware appeared as vessels for visitors to Kasama Inari Shrine and as water jars, tea jars, kitchen goods, and everyday miscellaneous ware. These forms depended on a durable clay body and on shapes suited to holding, storing, serving, and cleaning. At the Ibaraki Ceramic Art Museum restaurant, local ingredients are served in Kasama ware vessels, linking the older household uses of water, tea, and kitchens with a present-day table in Kasama.

The beginning is traced to the Edo period, when Chouemon, a potter from Shigaraki, taught pottery to Kuno Hanemon Michinobu, the headman of Hakoda village, now part of Kasama City. Under the protection of the Kasama domain, jars and large containers developed into everyday ware. After the war, potters from different regions came to Kasama, and prefectural pottery guidance facilities helped train people in the craft, broadening the town’s ceramic community.

The making sequence begins with digging and preparing clay, then kneading it before forming by wheel, mold-raising, or hand-building. Decoration can be added while the body is still soft, followed by drying and bisque firing at about 800 degrees for 10 to 15 hours. Underglaze painting, dipping or flowing glaze, and final firing at about 1250 to 1300 degrees for about 20 hours lead into cooling, finishing, and checks for cracks.

Kasama ware now includes vases, interior goods, and ceramic art objects as well as older household vessels. Newer techniques have also produced Kasama heat-resistant ware, clay pots, and ceramic plates. At the Ibaraki Ceramic Art Museum, learning materials and ceramics activities give students and visitors a way to connect those forms with clay preparation, forming, glazing, firing, and the finished vessel in hand.