The son of a potter, Kazuya (Kaz) Ishida was born in Bizen, Japan, a region famed for its characteristically rustic and durable pottery that results from a unique combination of local clay and a long, slow firing process. Like many traditional art forms in Japan, the 800-year-old art of Bizen is passed down within families or from master to apprentice, with potters practising today using the materials and techniques honed by their fathers, grandfathers and earlier ancestors, unchanged for hundreds of years.
“My father started the pottery business in our family, so I’m the second generation,” Kaz says, adding that his father works in the traditional style. “He often makes handcrafts such as dragons and lions as well as items for the tea ceremony. At my family home, we have a woodfired kiln known as a noborigama [a multiple-chamber climbing kiln that is built into the top of a slope], and my father taught me how to load it and how to fire it.”
Any patterns on Bizen ware are created by the quality of the clay and how it reacts to heat, the application of
