is a

Japanese pottery is one of the oldest Japanese crafts and Japanese art, art forms, dating back to the Neolithic period. Types have included earthenware, pottery, stoneware, porcelain, and Blue and white porcelain, blue-and-white ware. Japan has an exception ...

term describing the artistic technique where multiple colors of

clay Clay is a type of fine-grained natural soil material containing clay minerals (hydrous aluminium phyllosilicates, e.g. kaolinite, ). Most pure clay minerals are white or light-coloured, but natural clays show a variety of colours from impuriti ...

are marbled or combined to create various designs. The technique can also be called , although this more commonly refers to throwing multiple colors of clay on a wheel.

History

is a contemporary Japanese term. Marbling ceramic techniques were first found used in

Egypt Egypt ( , ), officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, is a country spanning the Northeast Africa, northeast corner of Africa and Western Asia, southwest corner of Asia via the Sinai Peninsula. It is bordered by the Mediterranean Sea to northe ...

and

China China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. With population of China, a population exceeding 1.4 billion, it is the list of countries by population (United Nations), second-most populous country after ...

and through the Romans to the

West West is one of the four cardinal directions or points of the compass. It is the opposite direction from east and is the direction in which the Sun sets on the Earth. Etymology The word "west" is a Germanic word passed into some Romance langu ...

. Early ceramics in

Stoke-on-Trent Stoke-on-Trent (often abbreviated to Stoke) is a city and Unitary authorities of England, unitary authority area in Staffordshire, England. It has an estimated population of 259,965 as of 2022, making it the largest settlement in Staffordshire ...

use more than one colour of clay for decorative effect. In England this was referred to as agateware. In Japan there are a few pieces from the Momoyama period (1568–1600), and

Edo period The , also known as the , is the period between 1600 or 1603 and 1868 in the history of Japan, when the country was under the rule of the Tokugawa shogunate and some 300 regional ''daimyo'', or feudal lords. Emerging from the chaos of the Sengok ...

(1603–1868), as well as extant pieces of , that display marbled ceramics. There was an explosion in popularity of the technique from about 1978–1995 in Japan, due probably to Aida Yusuke's advertising and to Matsui Kousei, who refers to his work as . The term started being used in the 1970s to describe related kanji ''neriage''. Yusuke Aida was on a television commercial for

Nescafé Nescafé is a brand of instant coffee sold by the multinational food and drink corporation Nestlé. It comes in many different forms. The name is a portmanteau of the words "Nestlé" and "café". Nestlé first introduced their flagship coffee br ...

and it seems to have entered the vocabulary at about that time when his nerikomi coffee cups were available to the first people contacting the advertisers. It was used in the

Tang dynasty The Tang dynasty (, ; zh, c=唐朝), or the Tang Empire, was an Dynasties of China, imperial dynasty of China that ruled from 618 to 907, with an Wu Zhou, interregnum between 690 and 705. It was preceded by the Sui dynasty and followed ...

in 7th-century

there are at least two Chinese characters to describe variations of this technique (one surface, one structural).

Technique

In , a design is created in such a way that it extends through a long block of clay, akin to the murrine canes of

millefiori Millefiori () is a glasswork technique which produces distinctive decorative patterns on glassware. The term millefiori is a combination of the Italian words "mille" (thousand) and "fiori" (flowers). Apsley Pellatt in his book ''Curiosities of ...

glasswork. By slicing thin slabs of the block, the design can be repeated, to either be reassembled in repetition or applied to a larger piece.

References

External links

Origins Exhibition James Makins, Dorothy Feibleman, Ray Horacek Cera Gallery
in Japanese: 根源展示ジェームズ・メイキンス, ドロシー・ファイブルマン, レイホラチェック Cera ギャラリ
Information & News
{{Japanese ceramics Artistic techniques Japanese art terminology Japanese pottery Japanese words and phrases

History

Technique

See also

References

External links