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Mikawachi Ware

400 years history from the Hirado clan and now production in Sasebo, Nagasaki prefecture

Mikawachi Ware is called the Hirado Ware as well.

It is the ceramic fired in Kihara, Enaga, and Mikawachi of the Kyusyu area, southern peninsula of Japan. Those are adjacent to the southern tip of former Hirado and Arita which was the clan of former Saga and Hasami which was the clan of former Omura. Since the opening of the Mikawachi Ware in 1598, a great deal of the potteries were offered to the Imperial Court and the Shogun Family as a result of the ceramic artists’ devotion to make outstanding pieces from daily use to high-class interior decoration.

There are several features making Mikawachi Ware exceptional:

1. It is colored by the white porcelain whose components are the natural ceramic stones (The white color of Mikawachi Ware is called the purest white the real white color pursued the limit of pure white.)

2. Painting Chinese dolls, the beauties of nature, and the Autumn flowers Pattern by hand with a very delicate touch.

3. Highly technical handiwork in details, such as sukashibori (openwork), haritsuke (pasting), okiage (painting white pattern by the brush with a little clay), hakutai (white porcelain) and so on.

Hiradokakusho Kiln has practiced the traditional sometsuke (in underglaze blue) technique and made the white porcelain with the profound color based on white and wet feeling dyeing texture touch. Their work is truly notable.

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