Round Sided Indigo Glaze Bowls by Shussai-gama

These bowls are by Shussai-gama, a pottery collective based in Shimane, west Japan.

With a dark indigo glaze, these are pieces from somewhere known as a meeting place between craft and design in post-war Japan.

Shussai-gama was founded by a group of five friends in 1947, inspired by the ideals of William Morris and Japan’s own folk crafts movement of the time. They aimed to work in traditional ways with local clays and glaze ingredients to make items that would bring the decorative arts to a wide audience.

There were ups and downs, but slowly Shussai-gama established an identity in combining techniques from Japanese ceramic culture with new movements in product design.

The fifteen or so potters working today in Shussai-gama's converted rice warehouse, still do so by hand with locally collected materials. Their large wood-fired kiln is lit three or four times a year.  The ethos of Shussai-gama remains to provide unassuming and attractive items for life through the work of the potter.

These bowls present a limited edition variant on the classic ‘Shussai blue’ glaze shade. The normal light indigo here becomes a shade closer to navy. Designed forms, nature and craft can be found in the interplay in colours, and the rim of unglazed pottery clay visible at the base.

Quite deep, the bowls may be used for food, or even plant presentation. They are each around 12 cm in diameter, and same at the base.  The bowls are about 9 cm high, and weigh around 475 g.

As they are made by hand, there are small variations between each piece.