Bare pots for the table and the tokonoma, fired once in the anagama above Ōhara and sold only at our kiln openings, and here in the weeks after.
Tsubo, iron-flecked stoneware, spring 2026 firing34 cm · ¥68,000
Saturday 24 and Sunday 25 October 2026
10:00 to 17:00, last entry 16:30
The studio, Jōdoji Baba-chō 12, Sakyō-ku
Free. The first hour is by reservation, forty places each day
Around 380 pieces go in. About 260 come out sound. No two are alike, so what you see here is the type, not the piece: you choose your own at the opening, or from what remains afterwards.
Prices include tax. Pieces bought after the opening are posted within Japan for a flat ¥1,200; international post is quoted by weight. We keep about a third of every firing back for exhibitions and for our own table, and we do not take orders for specific pieces before a kiln is opened.
The anagama at Ōhara is a single-chamber tunnel kiln built into the slope in 2016. We stoke it with red pine for about 110 hours, then leave it sealed for a week to cool. Nothing is glazed: the colour is ash from the fire settling on bare clay, and the side of a pot that faced the flame will never match the side that did not.
Coarse and pale, with feldspar that bursts white through the surface in the fire. The clay for cups and flasks, because it is kind to the lips and light in the hand.
A fine, iron-rich clay from the Fushimi side of the city, fired to a deep brick. At the front of the kiln it takes a green ash flash that we cannot plan for and would not want to.
Our own mix, with crushed iron sand from the Kamo river bed. Dark, heavy and flecked where the iron melts out. It holds the largest forms without slumping.
A glaze is a decision made before the fire. We would rather let the fire decide.
Trained at the prefectural ceramics school in Kiyomizu and apprenticed for six years in Shigaraki before opening the Jōdoji studio in 2014. Throws every piece that goes into the kiln, and rejects more of them than she keeps.
Built the Ōhara anagama by hand over two summers with a borrowed excavator and a great deal of advice. Splits and stacks the pine a year ahead, runs the firing schedule, and keeps the studio cat, Sumi, fed.
You are on the list. The autumn letter goes out on 10 October with the shelves listed.