Experience Authentic Bizen Ware Art with this Matsuda Kazan Guinomi. This Wood Fired Sake Cup serves as a Bizen Yaki Stoneware vessel and Natural Ash Guinomi, featuring Goma Sesame Marks and Feldspar Inclusions — an essential Japanese Sake Cup for any Bizen Pottery collector seeking Signed Tomobako Box provenance.
🔹 [ Basic Details ] • Artist: Matsuda Kazan (松田華山) • Technique: Bizen-yaki, unglazed wood-fired stoneware • Era: Contemporary (2010–2019) • Origin: Bizen, Okayama Prefecture, Japan • Dimensions: Height approx. 5.3 cm, Rim diameter approx. 5 cm, Foot diameter approx. 4 cm • Box: Signed tomobako with red seal • Condition: Good — surface character consistent with the tradition
🔹 [ Cultural & Artistic Insight ] Matsuda Kazan shaped this guinomi with the compact proportions that Bizen sake cups demand — a vessel that fills the palm completely. The surface carries the full autobiography of its firing: grey ash deposits on one face, warm golden goma on another, a blush of iron red where the kiln atmosphere shifted.
White feldspar inclusions punctuate the clay body like stars in a geological sky. These are not impurities — they are the signatures of Bizen's particular clay, mined from rice paddies where millennia of sediment compressed into the raw material of this tradition.
"Each inclusion is a small white refusal — feldspar that will not melt, that holds its identity within the fire."
🔹 [ Deep-Dive Commentary ] The guinomi occupies a special position in Japanese ceramic culture. Unlike the tea bowl — which serves ritual — the guinomi serves pleasure. Its small scale invites intimacy: the relationship between lips and clay becomes personal.
Matsuda Kazan's work at Bizen follows the tradition of extended wood firings where red pine fuel creates the atmosphere that transforms raw clay. The variation across this cup's surface — from cool grey to warm brown to golden goma — maps the cup's position in the kiln and the shifting currents of flame and ash that passed around it.
The slightly tapered cylindrical form concentrates sake's aroma while the rough texture provides satisfying grip.
🔹 [ SHIPPING & PACKAGING ] • Dispatch: Within 1-6 business days • Carrier: Japan Post EMS / UPS (with tracking) • Packaging: Carefully wrapped with protective materials
