What It Takes to Keep Kutani Ware Going

Kutani ware is often recognized by its color—the detailed brushwork and vivid overglaze decoration added to its surface. But before any of those colors appear, someone must make the form beneath them.

Founded in 1914, Miyasou Seitosho has spent more than a century producing ceramic bodies for Kutani ware figurines and decorative objects. During my visit to its workshop in Komatsu, Ishikawa, I began to understand how much of that work usually remains unseen.

Kutani ware has traditionally been made through a division of labor. One workshop forms and fires the undecorated body. A painter or another studio adds the decoration. Wholesalers and retailers then bring the finished work to market. This system has allowed each maker to develop highly specialized skills. At the same time, it can make the earliest stages of production—and the people responsible for them—difficult to see.

The Work Beneath the Surface

 Inside Miyasou’s workshop are molds that have been preserved for generations. Some date back to 1917. They are not simply historical objects. Each mold holds practical knowledge: how a form is divided, where its seams should fall, how clay should be applied or poured, and how the piece will change in the kiln. Yet possessing valuable skills does not guarantee that a workshop can continue.

As Kutani ware production declines, the network supporting it is also becoming smaller. Ceramic-body makers, painters, material suppliers, kilns, wholesalers, and other specialists all depend on one another. When one part disappears, it affects what the entire region is able to make.

Miyasou’s representative, Yoshihiro Miyamoto-san, spoke about the limits of continuing only as a supplier of undecorated ceramic bodies. For years, the workshop received orders, produced the requested forms, and waited for the next order. Although the work required experience and precision, Miyasou had little control over how it was presented or valued after it left the workshop. The ceramic body was essential, but it was rarely the part customers were asked to notice.

Miyamoto-san began to feel that if the company continued making only what it was asked to make, it would become difficult to sustain the business. The problem was not a lack of skill. The problem was that those skills were becoming harder to support within a shrinking industry. We often talk about preserving craft as though technique were the only thing at risk. But technique cannot survive separately from the people, materials, income, and relationships that allow it to be practiced.

Finding Another Way Forward

Working with designers gave Miyasou a different view of what it already had. One suggestion was to experiment with a matte glaze, a finish the workshop had not produced before. Miyasou began mixing pigments into the glaze and developing its own range of colors. The resulting maneki-neko kept a familiar form, but its matte surface and simple colors gave it a different presence. When I first saw them, they revealed a side of Kutani ware I had not encountered before. That difference was not the goal by itself.

The design gave Miyasou a way to present its own knowledge more directly. Instead of remaining only one stage in another company’s product, the workshop could make decisions about the material, finish, color, presentation, and story of the finished piece. It also offered another way to encounter Kutani ware. Through the maneki-neko’s form, color, and finish, people could become interested in the materials and technical knowledge behind the region’s ceramics—including the work of the workshops that create the bodies beneath the decoration.

Developing original products and building its own brand therefore became more than a marketing decision. It changed Miyasou’s position within the production process. By communicating directly with customers, the workshop could explain its use of clay made from locally sourced Hanasaka pottery stone. It could talk about its molds, forming techniques, and glaze development. It could show that the undecorated ceramic body is not simply an empty surface waiting for the “real” work to begin. The form itself already contains generations of knowledge.

What Are We Trying to Preserve?

Miyamoto-san hopes that by developing Miyasou’s own products and brand, the workshop can create possibilities not only for itself, but for the wider Kutani ware industry.

“If Miyasou can become a source of hope for the region by building a brand and creating our own products,” he said, “that is something I want to do for the next generation.”

One workshop cannot solve every problem facing the industry. It cannot reverse declining production or replace all the specialists who are disappearing. But Miyasou’s work raises a different set of questions. How can a traditional craft make room for new expressions while staying connected to the materials, skills, and knowledge that define it? When a familiar form is presented in a different way, can it help more people notice the craftsmanship behind it?

For Miyasou, design and branding do not seem to be about moving away from Kutani ware. They are a way of making the workshop’s existing knowledge more visible—and creating new possibilities for that knowledge to continue.

What stayed with me after visiting Miyasou was the sense that its history is still being written. Old molds remain in the workshop, but new colors are being tested. Designers are being invited into the process. Familiar forms are being reconsidered. The future of Kutani ware may depend not only on preserving its knowledge, but also on giving its makers the opportunity to carry that knowledge forward.