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Side view of the Tsukamoto Mashiko ware soup cup in black glaze, showing a wide rounded form with a loop handle, heavily textured granular black glaze across the body transitioning to warm amber at the rim, and a pale cream interior.
Tsukamoto Mashiko Ware Traditional Glaze Soup Cup Black
Tsukamoto

Tsukamoto Mashiko Ware Traditional Glaze Soup Cup Black

Sale price$59.00

The black glaze on this soup cup does not read as flat or uniform. Across the body, the surface is heavily textured — coarse and granular, catching light across thousands of small raised points rather than reflecting it evenly. Where the glaze thins toward the rim, a warm amber-brown emerges underneath, the transition from black to cream happening in a narrow band that shifts with the angle of the light. Tsukamoto has produced Mashiko ware from this clay since 1864, when first-generation Rihei Tsukamoto built the kiln that has since become the largest in Mashiko. Mashiko's iron-rich local clay and its tradition of glazes derived from locally sourced stone give the ware its characteristic weight and depth — qualities that Shoji Hamada, the Living National Treasure who established his workshop in Mashiko in 1924, recognized as the foundation of a serious folk craft tradition. The interior of this cup is glazed in pale cream, the contrast between the two surfaces as direct as the form itself. Wide, rounded, and low — a cup that sits well in both hands.
Side view of the Tsukamoto Mashiko ware soup cup in black glaze, showing a wide rounded form with a loop handle, heavily textured granular black glaze across the body transitioning to warm amber at the rim, and a pale cream interior.
Tsukamoto Mashiko Ware Traditional Glaze Soup Cup Black Sale price$59.00

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.