[Shigaraki ware]
One style of Japanese pottery made around Shigaraki area in Shiga prefecture. It is one of Japan’s Six Ancient Kilns.
By around the end of the medieval period, potters in Shigaraki were making daily utensils such as jars, vats, and mortars using anagram kilns.
Because the beauty of its worm reddish hiiro(scarlet) flashing, deep green natural ash biidoro glaze and black scorching attracted Sen No Rikyu and other tea masters, Shigaraki got to be known as Tea pottery.
Shigaraki ware was designated by Japanese government as a traditional craft in 1976 and there are over 300 kilns today.
Shigaraki ware is famous for statures of tanuki (a small raccoon dog) that are often settled in front of shops and restaurants as a lucky charm (the word “tanuki” can mean “excel past the competition” in Japanese). The history of Tanuki statures began in Meiji period when the potter Tetsuzo Fujiwara in Shiga made tanuki for the first time.
[Yasuhisa KOYAMA] (1936-)
A Shigaraki ware potter in Shigaraki, Shiga prefecture.
Yasuhisa was born in Shigaraki in 1936. He graduated Shiga prefecture vocational training school in 1955 then refined his skills under a ceramic designer, Sakuzo Hineno.
Then he established a hole type kiln in 1968 and has been creating an ancient ceramic called Suemono which is unglazed wares burned in a hole type kiln.
He has held his personal exhibitions in the country since 1968 at Mitsubishi department in Nihonbashi, Takashimaya Departments and so on, as well as overseas including US, UK, German and France since 1992 and his works are highly evaluated both in and out of Japan.