The Ohi Family
Kanazawa raku since 1666
The Ohi family has shaped tea bowls in Kanazawa for over three and a half centuries — eleven generations in a single line of raku. The amber glaze, ame-yu (飴釉), is the family's quiet identifier.
Origin
In 1666, Maeda Tsunanori — fifth lord of the Kaga domain — invited Senso Soshitsu (仙叟宗室, 1622–1697), the fourth-generation Soshitsu of Urasenke, to Kanazawa. Senso brought with him a young potter who had been a close disciple of Raku Ichinyu, the fourth-generation head of the Raku family in Kyoto. The potter — Chōzaemon, then thirty-seven — was granted land in a village called Ōhi outside Kanazawa. He took the village's name as his own and built a kiln. He came to be known as Ohi Chozaemon I (Hodoan, 1631–1712).
What he carried with him was not a copy of Kyoto Raku. It was a divergence. Chozaemon worked the same hand-forming method as the Raku family — no wheel, low-fired, glazed by experience rather than formula — but his palette settled on something different. Amber, brown-gold, the color of dark honey held against light. The glaze became the family signature within a generation, and has remained so for ten more.
The amber glaze — ame-yu
Ame-yu translates as "candy glaze." It is iron-rich, fired at temperatures lower than most Japanese ceramics, and surfaces vary from firing to firing. Some bowls finish smooth, almost glossy. Others arrive textured by what the kiln gave that day — pinpoints of darker iron, a rim where the glaze pulled thin.
Black raku also belongs to the Ohi vocabulary, particularly in recent generations, but ame-yu is what the family is recognized by.
Lineage and succession
Each head of the family takes the name Chōzaemon upon succession. The eleventh — Toshio Ohi (b. 1958) — is the current head. His father, Ōhi Chōzaemon X (Toyasai, 1927–2023), preceded him. Before succession, future Chōzaemons work under their own names — and pieces signed by those earlier names remain in circulation, distinct from later work under the family title.
The system means that one name can refer to overlapping lives at different stages. A bowl signed Toshiro is a bowl made before the tenth succession. A bowl signed Rakutaro is a bowl made before the eleventh.
Names in the collection
The current collection groups work across the lineage. Some names are heads of the family; others belong to related practitioners working in or alongside the Ohi tradition:
- Ohi Chōzaemon — heads of the family. The catalog includes works attributed to the ninth generation (Toudosai, 1901–1986).
- Ohi Toshiro (大樋年朗) — the tenth Chōzaemon's pre-succession name.
- Ohi Rakutaro (大樋楽太郎) — the eleventh Chōzaemon's pre-succession name.
- Ohi Choami (大樋長阿弥) — the Nakamura Choami line, a Kyoto-rooted family of potters who trained in and adopted the Ohi style. Pieces marked 大樋長阿弥造 belong to this Choami line.
- Ohi Cho / Cho-ami — variants appearing on related works.
- Ohi Choraku — Choraku appears both as an art name used in the main line historically and as a related practitioner. Pieces in the collection are dated to the twentieth century.
- Ohi Ippei (1920–1993) — a master who worked at the Ohi family kiln in Kanazawa.
How to read an Ohi bowl
The first thing to look at is the foot (kōdai). Hand-formed bowls show the maker's pinch lines — asymmetric, slightly uneven. The interior (mikomi) catches the glaze in a small puddle near the base; Ohi pieces tend to keep this thin and luminous, never glassy. The piece is signed on its accompanying box (tomobako), often paulownia, which is part of the work and never separate from it.
Currently available
Pieces currently held are gathered in the Ohi Lineage collection — each updated as inventory turns.