Though Yoshinobu Morimoto works in the Bizen-yaki style – a ceramics tradition with over 800 years of history that is beloved among devotees of the art – his pieces are a radical departure from the common image of Bizen-ware. Their texture, in particular, is vastly different from other modern Bizen-ware pieces, strongly influencing both the look and feel of the pieces.

“The key is staying focused on the goal of creating what I think of as ‘quality’ Bizen-ware, and bringing together the ingredients – the clay, the kiln, the mindset and the skill – needed to bring it into being,” Morimoto says.

Morimoto long ago fell in love with the Ko-Bizen – ancient Bizen-ware – of the Azuchi-Momoyama Period (in the late 16^th century), and has devoted himself for 20 years to studying that style. As a ceramics tradition, Ko-Bizen spans from the Kamakura period (covering the 12^th to the 14^th century) to the middle of the Edo period, which ended in 19th. But it reached full flower in the Momoyama period, when the feudal lords and other nobility of the time spent vast sums to commission teaware. It was during this period that ceramic vessels previously viewed merely as everyday implements for the lower class took on an aesthetic value of their own, and that many a masterpiece of ceramics came into being.

In the late Edo period, waning demand for teaware led the culture surrounding Bizen-ware to vanish for a time. As a result, there is no documentation of how Bizen-ware was produced during the Momoyama period. Given this absence of knowledge surrounding the actual techniques used during that time, the only way to replicate Ko-Bizen is by careful study of surviving works, coupled with trial and error.

“I take the long view of Bizen-ware, as an art form that stretches from the Kamakura period to today. But there is an undeniable sense of power about pieces from the Muromachi and Momoyama eras,” Morimoto says.

“The aesthetic themes of those periods are at the very heart of Bizen-ware,” Morimoto says; it was, after all, during the Momoyama period that practitioners of tea ceremony began to absorb the Bizen-ware tradition – which, during the Muromachi period, produced miscellaneous household vessels – into their aesthetic sensibilities. “My job is to keep those themes in focus and pull them into the present, in order create works that strike people as the paragon of Bizen-ware.”

Morimoto was born in 1976 in Akaiwa, Okayama Prefecture. After graduating high school, he began studying at the Bizen Ceramics Center, a notable school in the style’s hometown of Bizen, Okayama.

Morimoto had intended to become a pottery artist. But he began to notice that many people around him were turning out commercialized Bizen-ware meant for souvenir trinkets – a fact that made him uneasy. As he continued to study ceramics, he eventually happened upon Ko-Bizen. He dove into the existing literature on the subject, and whenever he found an opportunity to view Momoyama-era ceramics – not just Bizen-ware, but Shino-ware, Iga-ware, Oribe-ware and other styles as well – he seized it, traveling all around Japan in the process.

At age 24, Morimoto built a kiln of his own, and has constructed five others since. He has used these kilns to test out his own theories of ceramics, always keeping Ko-Bizen in view as a basis for comparison.

At a time when many artisans are working to update Bizen-ware for the modern era, Morimoto is in a sense running against the current, seeking to bring the power of ancient Bizen back into view. We invite you to experience that power for yourself.