Electives · A field guide
Pottery epicenters and meccas around the world.
Every one of these places is a different answer to the same question: what can you do with dirt and fire? Jingdezhen answered with porcelain so fine you can read through it. Bizen answered by refusing glaze altogether and letting the kiln paint the pot. Faenza answered in tin white and painted color, Stoke with a factory, Mata Ortiz with a coil and a paintbrush. A place becomes a pottery mecca when clay is woven into the identity of the town, when generations of makers built a recognizable tradition there, and when the local clay culture still matters today. Thirty-one of them are below.
This page covers the twenty-one heavyweight meccas grouped by region, Japan on its own map with the Six Ancient Kilns, ten specialty pilgrimage destinations, the ten ceramic languages the whole list is written in, and six documentaries. The North American places get a card each here and a page of their own.
This is the short version: the ten places that give you a working mental map of world ceramics, and one film. All thirty-one, Japan’s map, the languages and the other five films are in the comprehensive version.
Read it, then watch it
Why this is written down and filmed, both.
A field guide is a list, and a list of thirty-one places is exactly the kind of thing that reads well and films badly. But a place is not a paragraph. The sound of a Bizen kiln being stoked at three in the morning, the scale of a Jingdezhen workshop, the way a Mashiko potter’s hands move: those are the reasons the places matter, and you can only get them from film. So this page carries the map and six documentaries carry the feel.
Read the ten first, so the names mean something. Then watch a film about one of them and you will find the other nine start to make sense by contrast. Then read the rest of the list, and the world of ceramics, which looks enormous from outside, will turn out to be about a dozen ideas that traveled.
Use both, in this order
The ten first. Then the Jingdezhen film. Then the full list, one region at a time, with the ceramic languages band open beside it.
If you only learn ten
The fastest possible mental map of the world’s pottery.
Ten places, and between them they cover nearly every idea in ceramics. Learn what each one is known for and every other tradition on earth becomes a variation on one of them.
- 1Jingdezhen, ChinaPorcelain. The closest thing pottery has to an undisputed world capital, and it has been for a thousand years.
- 2Mashiko, JapanStudio and folk pottery. Where the mingei movement got its hands dirty.
- 3Bizen, JapanWood firing and unglazed stoneware. The kiln does the decorating.
- 4Mino, JapanShino, Oribe and the tea-ware glaze traditions.
- 5Arita, JapanJapanese porcelain, and the export ware that reached Europe as Imari.
- 6Longquan, ChinaCeladon. Thick, jade-green, controlled reduction.
- 7Yixing, ChinaHandmade teapots and zisha clay.
- 8Faenza, ItalyMaiolica. The word faience is this town’s name.
- 9Iznik, TurkeyOttoman ceramics and tile. Cobalt, turquoise, and the raised red.
- 10Stoke-on-Trent, EnglandIndustrial pottery and tableware. The Potteries, literally.
Before the list
What counts as a mecca, and what this guide is not.
The heavyweights, part one
East Asia. Nine places where most of ceramics was invented.
China invented porcelain and celadon. Korea gave Japan its potters. Japan turned all of it into a dozen traditions a few hours apart.
A country of kilns
Japan deserves its own pottery map.
Japan does not have a few famous pottery towns. It has dozens of traditions tied to specific places, many stretching back hundreds or more than a thousand years.
The Six Ancient Kilns
Six places that have been firing pottery continuously since the medieval period, recognized together as a Japanese heritage. Two are heavyweights above; four are here.
| Kiln | Known for |
|---|---|
| Bizen | Unglazed wood firing |
| Seto | Glazed stoneware and porcelain |
| Shigaraki | Coarse clay, natural ash, fire color, and the tanuki figures outside every shop |
| Tokoname | Red stoneware, teapots, and large storage vessels |
| Echizen | High-fired stoneware |
| Tamba | Ash-glazed folk stoneware |
Other major Japanese centers
| Place | Known for |
|---|---|
| Hagi | Soft tea ware, feldspathic glazes, earthy clay bodies that crackle and stain with use |
| Karatsu | Korean-influenced stoneware and tea ceramics |
| Kutani | Highly colorful overglaze porcelain |
| Kyoto | Kyo-yaki and Kiyomizu-yaki, and the raku tradition our raku workshops descend from |
| Okinawa | Yachimun pottery |
| Hasami | Functional porcelain |
| Koishiwara and Onta | Folk pottery, slip-decorated with chattered and brushed surfaces |
The heavyweights, part two
Europe, the Mediterranean and North Africa. Eight places.
Tin glaze arrived from the Islamic world, porcelain arrived from China, and Europe spent four hundred years trying to copy both before it built factories instead.
The heavyweights, part three
The Americas. Four places, and a page of their own.
These four are on the world list because they belong there. Our North America page gives each of them, and fifteen more, the room they deserve.
The specialists
Ten more places, each famous for one thing.
Not heavyweights, and not lesser. Each of these owns a single idea so completely that it belongs on the map.
The big picture
What can you do with dirt and fire? Ten answers.
Every place on this page speaks one or two of these. Learn the ten and the whole map becomes readable.
Porcelain
Jingdezhen, Arita, Limoges, Meissen, Hasami. White, translucent, high-fired, and the material that every other tradition spent centuries trying to copy.
Celadon
Longquan, Gangjin, Icheon. A reduction-fired green that looks like jade and depends on iron, thickness and the kiln.
Wood fire
Bizen, Shigaraki, Seagrove. The kiln as the decorator: ash, flashing, and the pot’s position in the flame.
Folk pottery
Mashiko, Onta, Tamba, Kosiv. Functional ware made in quantity by people who did not call themselves artists, and the movement that decided they were.
Maiolica
Faenza, Deruta, Puebla, Talavera de la Reina. Tin-white glaze as a canvas for painted color.
Lustreware
Manises, Deruta. Metallic shimmer from a third, low, reduction firing, learned from the Islamic world.
Tea ware
Mino, Hagi, Karatsu, Kyoto, Yixing. Pots made to be held, for a ceremony that rewards the imperfect and the worn.
Architectural tile
Iznik, Fez, Delft, Puebla. Ceramics as a wall, a floor, a dome.
Industrial
Stoke-on-Trent, Limoges, Khurja. Repeatability, press molds, transfer printing, and the plate on your table.
Hand-built
Mata Ortiz, Yixing, Oaxaca, Chulucanas. The coil, the pinch and the burnish, without a wheel, at the highest level there is.
Watch it
Now see six of these places on film.
Watch this one, then pick a place.
None of these filmmakers work here or know we exist. Between them they cover Jingdezhen, Mashiko, Bizen, Stoke, Deruta and Puebla. The still frames load while you read; the player and its cookies wait until you press play.
Twenty-four minutes walking through the porcelain capital of the world. The other five films are in the comprehensive version.
How it connects here
Every one of these places is somewhere on our shelves.
This page is a map of the world. Here is where it touches Draper, Utah.
Three things to know here
Celadon on our wall is Longquan; the raku workshops are Kyoto; the wood-fired, salt and soda lessons in the University are Bizen and Seagrove. Pick a place from the ten and there is a glaze, a technique or a lesson here that descends from it.
The glaze wall
Celadon is Longquan. Tenmoku is a Chinese tea bowl. Shino and oribe are Mino. When you read a glaze name on our wall, you are reading a place. Our celadon lesson starts there.
Raku
Our raku workshops descend from Kyoto, by way of Bernard Leach and the American potters who turned a tea-bowl technique into a bonfire. The raku lesson tells that story.
Wood, salt and soda
Bizen, Shigaraki, Seagrove and Stoke-on-Trent between them invented the atmospheric firings in our wood-fired and salt and soda lessons.
Hand building
Yixing, Mata Ortiz and Oaxaca are proof that the wheel is optional. Our coil, pinch and burnishing lessons are their techniques, one continent over.
Slab molds
Stoke-on-Trent worked out the mold as a way to make the same plate a thousand times. Our slab molds are the friendly version of that idea.
A pilgrimage
Members here have been to Mashiko, Jingdezhen and Seagrove. Ask at show and tell. Somebody has a photograph.
Questions people actually ask
The ones that come up when the map is open.
Which one place should I learn first?
Jingdezhen. It is the closest thing pottery has to a world capital, porcelain is the material every other tradition measured itself against, and it is still full of potters. After that, Mashiko and Bizen, which are two opposite answers to the question of what a pot is for.
Why is Japan so dense with pottery towns?
Clay, wood, a tea ceremony that prized handmade pots, and centuries of regional lords who supported their own kilns. Six of those kilns have been firing continuously since the medieval period, and dozens of other towns developed their own styles a few hours apart.
What is the difference between maiolica, faience and delftware?
The same idea in three languages: a white tin glaze over earthenware, painted with color, fired once more. Italy called it maiolica, France called it faience after Faenza, and the Dutch made their blue-and-white version in Delft.
Where did celadon come from?
China, and Longquan in particular, in the Song dynasty. Korea took it further with inlaid decoration at Gangjin, and every celadon on a studio wall today is a descendant.
Is Stoke-on-Trent still making pottery?
Yes, at a fraction of its peak. Several of the great names still fire there, the bottle kilns are museums, and the town is still called The Potteries.
Why are the North American places so short here?
Because they have a page of their own with twenty entries. The four here are on the world list because they belong there; the North America page gives them room.
Related lessons
Six lessons that descend from places on this map.
Three to read next.
Every technique in the University came from somewhere. These are the somewheres, in lesson form.
That is the map
Dirt, fire, a place, and generations. Thirty-one times over.
Together these places cover porcelain, celadon, tea ware, wood firing, folk pottery, industrial ceramics, tin-glazed earthenware, lustreware, hand-built pottery, architectural tile and most of the decorated traditions that ever mattered. None of it is finished. Every one of these towns has a potter in it tonight, doing the thing.
If you want the other twenty-one places, Japan’s map, the ten languages and the other five films, switch to the comprehensive version at the top. Otherwise, pick one place from the ten and go find out everything about it.
This is a field guide, not a ranking. It combines historical importance, technical influence, living pottery culture, recognizability and the distinctiveness of each place’s specialty, and it is selective on purpose.
Which version would you like to print?
Both print clean, with the videos turned into labelled boxes you can search for later.