Kanemon Kiln Porcelain: Water Patterns

Kanemon Kiln porcelain keeps returning to one subject: water in motion. Following that subject across three vessels of different sizes shows something useful about buying patterned tableware — a drawing does not simply scale up and down with the object it is on.

On a long form the water can actually run

The box plate above has a wall of 3.8cm and enough length for the water to travel. That is the condition a moving pattern needs. Given room, the drawing reads as a current with a direction, and the eye follows it from one end to the other before it registers the food.

Practically, that gives you a rule for laying the plate. Place the portion across the flow rather than along it. Food set in line with the current buries the pattern; food set across it leaves the water visible on both sides and looks arranged without any effort.

On a curved wall the drawing wraps out of sight

A bowl is the second case. The rice bowl below carries the same underglazed water, but you never see all of it at once — part of the drawing is always around the curve, and it moves as you turn the vessel in your hand.

That suits a bowl, because a bowl is handled at every meal while a plate mostly sits. A pattern you discover gradually is worth more on the object you pick up than on the one you look down at.

On a small round form a pattern needs a subject instead

Shrink the vessel and a current has nowhere to go. So the answer changes: the small plate below is 1.8cm at the wall, and it carries a single tinted figure rather than a flowing field.

This is the decision most people notice only after owning both. A repeating pattern on a small plate turns into texture from a metre away. A single figure stays a figure. If you are buying one small piece to be looked at rather than filled, take the one with a subject on it.

Why the drawing sits under the glaze

All three are drawn beneath the glaze rather than on top of it. The consequence is simple and worth stating plainly: what you touch is glass, not pigment. A sponge cannot reach the pattern, and the edge of a knife runs over it rather than into it. On tableware that gets used rather than displayed, that is the difference between a pattern that lasts and one that thins.

What the body contributes

The pieces are porcelain, made in Saga. A dense white body is what lets a drawn line stay exact instead of spreading, which is why the water reads as line work rather than as a wash. It is also why the white between the lines stays white with use.

Where to start

If you want the pattern at its most legible, take the box plate with flowing water, where the drawing has room to run. For something used daily rather than presented, the small rice bowl is the better first piece. The Kanemon Kiln collection shows both together.