Mino ware, the everyday kind

Most of the pieces on our shelves come from the same place: the Tōnō area of Gifu Prefecture, in central Japan, where towns such as Tajimi, Toki and Mizunami have been making pottery for well over a thousand years. What comes out of the kilns there is called Mino ware, or Mino-yaki.

There is no single Mino style, and that is rather the point. In the late 1500s the region gave the tea ceremony its soft white Shino glaze and the bold green of Oribe. Today the same area makes everything from hand-glazed rice bowls to crisp white porcelain that goes in the dishwasher without complaint, and a large share of the everyday tableware in Japanese homes is made here.

That range is why we keep coming back to it. A Mino plate is made to be used: stacked, washed, reached for at breakfast and again at dinner. Some of the makers we stock lean toward play, like the bird-shaped bowls and the swallow lunch plates. Others lean toward quiet, like the ridged white porcelain of our sake set. The Mt. Fuji rice bowl manages both: a simple bowl that turns into a mountain on the drying rack.

A few of our pieces come from further along the same road. Our matcha latte cup is made by Shinzangama Yamatsu, a kiln that has been firing in Toki for about a century.

Every piece is made in Japan, and each one is a little different from the next. Glazes pool, snow is painted on by hand, a blue settles darker in one bowl than another. We think that is what makes them good company for an ordinary day.