Traditional Japanese tea cups of Kutani pottery and porcelain

Drinking green tea with Kutani china yunomi (Japanese tea cup)

tea cups kutani

Yunomi, a traditional Japanese tea cup, doesn’t have any handle, unlike Western. So that means we hold the yunomi cups directly. The touch of the ceramic is one of the important points to choose. 

 

When we hold the Kutani yunomi, we can enjoy the fine feeling on our parm. The craftsmen of Kutani porcelain color the patterns on the glazed base and burn it again. It makes slight surface asperity.

 

It goes without saying the beautiful decolation, the three-dimensional expression is also the appeal of Kutani pottery.


Kutani-yaki (ware) 

The history of Kutani-yaki began in 1655.

 

The first Daishoji Domain lord Maeda Toshiharu made Goto Saijiro learn the technique of Arita (Imari) ware and start the pottery industry in his domain. The name of the village where the porcelain stone was produced was Kutani. For this reason, they called the porcelain as “Kutani-yaki (ware)”.

 

The old Kutani ware has a feature of a green body. And the craftsmen took advantage of the color as one of the paints. Otherwise, the style using five colors, green, yellow, purple, red, and navy was famous old Kutani.

 

Though the pottery gained the reputation, the industrials disappeared from the Daishoji Domain just some 50 years after. The apparent reason hasn’t come out yet. But the researchers gather that it is the financial difficulties or policy shift of the domain.

 

After about 100 years of the passing, the movement of the renaissance came off. It brought forth the master craftsmen who created porcelain with red as based color or gold lines. 

 

Since then, the Kutani plate and vase gained popularity around the world as a work of art. On the other hand, Japanese people love the pottery as a tableware for everyday life.

 

 

If the tea cups get cracked…

 

Japanese tea cups of Kutani-yaki

Kutani ware includes both of earthenware and porcelain. If you want a thick and warm yunomi, earthenwares are best. But you prefer a smooth and strong one, you had better to buy porcelains.

 

Of course, please choose the colors and the patterns what you like.

 

Earthenware pottery

 

Porcelain

Set of cups


 

See also the Arita-yaki (Imari-yaki) tea cups

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