Jusen Kiln: Handmade Japanese Tableware and How to Choose It

Almost everything Jusen Kiln makes in Saga, Japan is small enough to lift with two fingers. What separates one piece from the next is not width but wall height. On the plates that come out of this kiln the edge rises somewhere between 1.1cm and 2.8cm, and that single measurement decides whether food stays put or slides toward your thumb.

A wall of 1.1cm, and what it can carry

The round small plate above rises 1.1cm at the edge, which is close to flat. A wall that low will keep something dry from travelling off the side, and it will do nothing at all for anything wet. The pattern is an arabesque laid down before the glaze, so it reads as underglazed decoration sitting beneath a smooth face rather than raised on top of it. Run a finger across and you feel glass, not paint. That combination of a low wall and an untextured surface is what makes a plate like this easy to wipe and easy to stack.

From there the wall climbs in small steps: 1.3cm on a square plate, 1.5cm and 1.6cm on two round ones, 2.3cm on a medium size, and 2.8cm on a three-legged version. Written down the gap between the lowest and the highest looks like nothing. At the table it is the difference between a surface you put a single item on and a shallow dish you can spoon something into without watching it escape.

Why porcelain matters at this scale

Every piece here is porcelain, which is the reason such a thin edge holds up. Porcelain fires dense and closes on itself, so the lip can be brought down to almost nothing and still take a knock. It also means the piece is cold when you pick it up and stays that way. A porcelain plate does not warm to the room the way a heavier clay body does, and for cold food that works in your favour. Much of the decoration follows the same restraint as the surface it sits on, drawn in blue under a clear coat, which is the tradition gathered in the blue and white ceramics here.

The cup that breaks the pattern

The striped cup above is the one form in the group that asks to be held rather than set down. It is a soba cup: straight sided, no handle, gripped around the outside with the whole hand. One of the soba cups from this kiln stands 6.3cm tall, and that height is the point of the shape. Below it a vessel is for sipping. At 6.3cm there is room to lower something into the cup, which is what a soba cup exists to allow. The striped decoration runs vertically, so the eye follows the wall down rather than around it.

Choosing between two small plates

The plate above carries gold at the rim over a dyed round centre and stands 1.5cm at the wall. Against the 1.1cm plate that is a marginal difference on paper and a real one in use: the higher wall gives a spoon something to push against, while the lower one gives you a clean field for a single item. If you are buying one, pick by what you serve most. If you are buying two, take one of each height rather than two of the same, because two plates that look different but behave identically are the most common mistake in a small collection.

Where to start

Begin with the wall height you actually need, then let the decoration decide between the candidates. The full range from this kiln sits in the Jusen Kiln collection, the flat forms are gathered under Plate, and the straight-sided cups sit in Soba Choko.