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Three-quarter view of the Tsukamoto Mashiko ware SABI flat bowl in deep green, showing a wide shallow form with a matte, vintage-finish glaze across the interior and dark clay body visible at the rim edge.
Tsukamoto Mashiko Ware SABI Flat Bowl Large Deep Green
Tsukamoto Mashiko Ware SABI Flat Bowl Large Deep Green
Tsukamoto

Tsukamoto Mashiko Ware SABI Flat Bowl Large Deep Green

Sale price$89.00

The SABI series from Tsukamoto is built around a matte glaze with deliberate depth — a finish that evokes something worn and seasoned rather than new, the surface treated to carry a quality that most glazes only develop over years of use. The Deep Green bowl arrives already carrying that character: the glaze sits with a quiet, aged presence that reads as settled rather than fresh. It is the kind of surface that improves in context — on a table that has seen use, alongside objects that have been handled. Tsukamoto has worked in Mashiko since 1864, when first-generation Rihei Tsukamoto established what became the town's largest kiln. The tradition the studio draws from is one of vessels made for daily life, their value measured in use rather than display. Wide and shallow, the SABI flat bowl holds a generous surface for food without height — the form as considered as the finish.
Three-quarter view of the Tsukamoto Mashiko ware SABI flat bowl in deep green, showing a wide shallow form with a matte, vintage-finish glaze across the interior and dark clay body visible at the rim edge.
Tsukamoto Mashiko Ware SABI Flat Bowl Large Deep Green Sale price$89.00

Meet the Artisan

Tsukamoto

Tsukamoto was founded in March 1864 by Tsukamoto Rihei, just 11 years after Otsuka Keisaburo established the first Mashiko kiln, making it one of the oldest continuously operating kilns in the tradition. The 2nd generation organized the first trade association among Mashiko potters, secured rights to clay-bearing land essential for regional production, and extended distribution into the Tokyo and Tohoku markets. The 3rd generation expanded further during the 1928 transition, and when the 4th generation Tsukamoto Takeshi founded the Tochigi Prefecture Ceramic Cooperative in 1950, his wife Shige proved decisive at a moment of postwar crisis. As demand for ceramic household goods collapsed in the 1950s, she developed a single-serve ceramic vessel for cooking rice and pursued its adoption until 1958, when it was taken up by Oginoya, the bento vendor at Yokokawa Station in Gunma Prefecture, as the container for their Toge no Kamameshi box lunch. The product became nationally famous and is credited with rescuing Mashiko's postwar ceramic industry. In 1955, Tsukamoto also established a residency program for apprentice potters that ran until 1993, training many of the independent ceramic artists who went on to define Mashiko as a town of individual makers. The kiln has been producing Mashiko ware continuously for over 160 years and remains one of the tradition's most significant kilns.