Shimizu Uichi: Iron Glazes, Celadon and the Horai Kiln — Living National Treasure of Japanese Ceramics

Shimizu Uichi (1926–2004) was a Kyoto-born potter who was designated a Living National Treasure in 1985 for iron-glaze ceramics (tetsuyu tōki). Trained under Ishiguro Munemaro, he spent the second half of his life at the Horai kiln in Shiga Prefecture, near Lake Biwa, where he developed glazes from local materials: celadon with fine crackle, the pale bluish horaiji, and iron glazes in black, persimmon and brown. His work is held in Japan's national art museum collections, and he is regarded as one of the leading glaze researchers of post-war Japanese ceramics.

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Early Life and Apprenticeship

Shimizu Uichi was born on 5 March 1926 in the Gojozaka district of Higashiyama, Kyoto, the eldest son of a family that ran a wholesale business in Kyoto ware. Gojozaka was, and is, the heart of Kyoto's ceramics trade, and he grew up among kilns, dealers and finished pots.

At fourteen, around 1940, he entered the studio of Ishiguro Munemaro, the potter who was himself later designated a Living National Treasure for iron-glaze ceramics. Ishiguro was then working on the reconstruction of Chinese Song-dynasty glazes, above all the tenmoku and persimmon glazes, and the young Shimizu watched that research at close range. In 1941 he entered the national ceramic testing institute in Kyoto as a trainee, studying under Hineno Sakuzō and Mizumachi Wasaburō, and in 1943 he became an assistant in the ceramics section of the Kyoto municipal industrial research institute. After the war he left that post and began working in his own studio in Kyoto.

Recognition came steadily. He was first selected for the Nitten exhibition in 1951, won the Asahi Shimbun Prize four years running at the Contemporary Japanese Ceramics exhibition from 1953 to 1956, received the Japan Ceramic Society's award for best artist in 1955, and took the Grand Prix at the Brussels World Exposition in 1958. In 1960 he was awarded the Prince Takamatsu Prize at the 7th Japan Traditional Kōgei Exhibition.

Signature Techniques and Mastery

Shimizu's foundation was the iron glaze: the family of glazes coloured by iron oxide that produces the blacks, persimmon-reds and browns of Song-dynasty tenmoku bowls. Unlike many potters who inherit a single regional style, he treated glaze as a field of research, and his career is a sequence of glazes he developed and named.

The turning point was 1970, when he left Kyoto and settled at the foot of Mount Horai in Shiga Prefecture, on the western shore of Lake Biwa. There he built a climbing kiln, the Horai-gama, and began working with clays and stones gathered around the mountain. From this local material came the glazes most associated with his later work: horaiji, a pale, faintly blue glaze close in feeling to Chinese qingbai; horaiyō and tetsuyō, iron glazes with a lustrous, mottled surface; a yellow variant he called ki-horai; and celadon (seiji) with deliberate ice-crackle (hyōretsu kannyū). Many of these later pieces carry the name Horai in their titles.

His forms are restrained: full-bodied jars with small mouths, kinuta-shaped vases, tea bowls with a quiet, dignified profile. Decoration, where it appears, is often pressed into the clay rather than painted over it, so that a motif such as a thistle shows as a soft shadow under the glaze. He described his lifelong theme as kangeki isshun, a moment that moves the heart. In 1977 he received the Japan Ceramic Society's Gold Prize, and on 13 April 1985 he was designated a holder of an Important Intangible Cultural Property, the status commonly called Living National Treasure, for iron-glaze ceramics, following the path of his teacher. He was later awarded the Medal with Purple Ribbon. From 1992 he opened the Horai kiln to younger potters, and he continued to work there until his death on 18 February 2004, at the age of 77.

Identifying Marks and Inscriptions

Works by Shimizu Uichi that come to market are usually accompanied by a tomobako, the signed wooden box made for the piece. The lid is typically inscribed in ink with the name of the work, which for later pieces often begins with the glaze or kiln name, such as Horai or Seiji, followed by the type of vessel, and with the potter's name Uichi. Some boxes also carry his seal. The inscription is part of the object's history: it records what the potter called the piece and confirms that the box and the work belong together.

We photograph the box, the inscription and the foot of every piece so that you can see them for yourself. The foot ring, the way the glaze stops above it, and the colour of the exposed clay are as much a part of the work as the glaze. We describe what we can see and do not make claims we cannot support; where we cannot read an inscription, we say so.

Works Handled by Kura Finds

Horaiji jar with impressed thistle motif (sold). A porcelain jar in horaiji glaze, the thistle flowers pressed into the shoulder in relief so that they appear and recede as the light moves. Diameter 20.3 cm, height 20.0 cm, with its signed wooden box. Horaiji thistle jars of this type were among the representative works of his Shiga years.

Horai tea bowl (sold). A tea bowl from the Horai kiln, diameter about 12 cm and height 8.5 cm, with a refined form and a dignified presence.

Celadon vase in kinuta form (available). A celadon flower vase of the kinuta, or mallet, shape, the pale glaze carrying a fine crackle. Height about 25.5 cm, width about 12.5 cm, with its signed wooden box and cloth wrapper. There is a small area of glaze loss at the mouth, shown in the photographs.

View available works by Shimizu Uichi in our collection →

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