A Japanese Kiln Reviving Persian Pottery
by Hans Karlsson
This story is an excerpt from a series of essays about the pottery town Tajimi in Gifu Prefecture, Japan.
If you have visited discovertajimi.com, you will know that by now we have introduced the city of Tajimi from a number of perspectives, including life, food, and not the least pottery. After all, Tajimi is part of the Mino area, which is the largest production centre for ceramics in the world. Some of the most famous styles of pottery were born here. Several Tajimi potters have been recognised as Living National Treasures by the government. Yet all this is very little known in other countries.
This time we visited a renowned kiln in the world of Mino ware — the Kobe-gama. Master potter Ryotaro Kato (44) received us in the office on a fine, sunny November day. He is a fast but well-articulated speaker, and you can feel his energy and passion for ceramics. Today we met him to learn about Persian lusterware and its revival here at the Kobe-gama. On the second floor in the main building, there is a wonderful little museum exhibiting fantastic lusterware. The kiln has a strong connection to this Persian art form.
Kobei-gama Pottery was founded in 1804 in Ichinokura town in Tajimi, by first-generation founder Katou Kobe in Mino-no-kuni, who dyed and supplied tableware to high-rank customers, including the lords of the enormous Edo castle in present-day Tokyo. Ryotaro is the son of his 7th successor and a young force for the revival of the Mino region and an increased awareness abroad about this major Japanese pottery tradition. In spite of its impressive tradition the kiln is still not well represented abroad and is presently working to establish itself in China, Europe and elsewhere. By contrast, the master potters of the Kobe-gama has played an important role in bringing foreign ceramic culture to Japan. The late Living National Treasure, Takuo Katō (1917–2005), who was the sixth-generation master ceramicist of the Kobe-Gama Pottery, was the man who first found interest in ancient Persian lusterware ceramics. It’s beautiful blue and three-colour glazes inspired him to revive the techniques of the Persian potters that had been completely lost after the 17th century.
The journey to success was a long one, as there was no information on how the old Persians made their lusterware. Finally, Kato came upon the research of a deceased American professor, Arthur Upham Pope, at a visit to Pahlavi University in Tehran. Pope was dead, but fortunately, his wife was still alive and showed Pope’s work to the Japanese ceramist. Kato now realised that not only was the clay used by the Persians different from that in Japan, but glazes included lead, tin, sodium, and other ingredients not utilized in the East Asian ceramic tradition. Furthermore, the lusterware kilns needed to be small. They could only accommodate a few pieces at a time and the firing temperatures must be kept quite low.
“The most important finding,” Ryotaro explains, “was the construction of the Persian kilns. They were designed in such a fashion that the flames of the fire could not touch the ceramics directly. Thanks to Pope’s research Takuo realised that it was the combination of the metal oxides in the glaze and the peculiar kiln design that the enabled the ancient Persians to produce their lusterware. With this insight, Takuo could now pursue his research in earnest. There were so many parts of the puzzle to this great mystery. The clay used by the Persians was different from here. It includes lots of salt and magnesium, which makes the ceramics fragile. It is also less heat resistant than Japanese clay. If you fire it at high temperature it falls apart and melts. In Japan and China, we usually fire at 1200° Celcius, but the Persian had to keep the temperature as low as 900°. This also contributes to the fragility of Persian lusterware.”
To illustrate Ryotaro brings an ancient looking piece of pottery from a shelf.
“As you can see this one is broken,” he says, “and most of the lusterware we find is. Takuo brought Iranian clay home and attempted to reproduce the classic Persian ceramics, but failed. He soon began using local clay from this area and was able to produce much stronger pottery that way. He glazed it according to the Persian way, however, so the end result was a hybrid. That is why the lusterware we make is strong.”
“What is special about lusterware,” he continues, “is that the colours shift depending on your viewing angle. It reflects light beautifully, but to produce ceramics that reflects light in this way is very hard. If the firing fails the ceramics come out completely matte. A large part of the pieces from every firing is failures.”
“Another important difference between Iran and Japan is the humidity,” he continues. “The climate in Iran is extremely dry. Its desert climate is ideal for lusterware production. By contrast, Japan is very humid. On a rainy day, the firings fail quite often. On top of that, the lusterware kilns need to be small in size, so production volume is modest. Because of this, and a large number of failed firings, it is not feasible to produce lusterware for a volume market, like tableware.”
This article is continued on discovertajimi.com. Please click to continue reading this article and many others on pottery and more in the city of Tajimi, Gifu Prefecture, Japan.
