Japanese bonsai pots

1. Shape. The last word of a Japanese pot name is its outline seen from above: round, oval, rectangle, square, hexagon, or one of the two lobed outlines, mokko and rinka.
2. Surface. A pot is either unglazed clay or glazed. Clay colour is the fired body itself; glaze colour is a coat of glass over a body that may be any colour underneath.
3. Size. Sizes are written in centimetres, with two or three figures depending on the shape. Words such as shōhin describe the tree, not the pot.
4. Kiln and mark. The place and the mark on the base say where a pot comes from. A mark identifies a maker or kiln; it does not authenticate a pot.

A Japanese pot name is a description, with the outline last. Read in the order surface, rim, wall, corners, plan, almost any pot name comes apart cleanly. These are the seven plan names that carry most of the work.

Two of them are lobed. Mokko is a round pot pressed in at four points; rinka has a petal-shaped rim, with the shape in the lip and the body beneath free to be plain. The full reading of a name, including rim, wall and corner words, is on Shape & size.

A pot’s colour comes from one of two places. Clay colours are the fired body, left unglazed, so the colour is the material. Glaze colours are a coat of glass over a body that may be any colour underneath. Unglazed pots are high-fired stoneware; the word used for them in pot names is yakishime, fired hard.

It matters in use. An unglazed clay body readily stains and takes on a patina; glaze reduces its direct contact with water.

Two glaze colours show the range. Namako is a blue glaze broken by pale mottling, and one of the glazes most used for growing trees rather than only showing them. Kin’yō is a sky-blue glaze, most often used against leaf, flower and fruit colour rather than with it. Among the eight clay names are shudei, shidei and kokudei.

One caution. Colour alone is weak evidence: a pot can mature in tone far enough to be taken for a different clay. Read it together with the form, the foot, the mark and the weight. Every name is set out on Clay & glaze.

Japanese listings give a pot’s size as a bare string of numbers, and the number of numbers changes with the shape. It is not carelessness: the documented convention uses three patterns, all in centimetres.

Rectangle, oval, mokko

Left to right × front to back × height. Three figures.

Square

One side × height. Two figures.

Round, rinka, hexagon

Outside diameter × height. Two figures.

So 16×13.5×5 on a rectangle is 16 cm across, 13.5 cm deep and 5 cm tall, and 14×15 on a round pot is 14 cm across and 15 cm tall. Two numbers is not a missing measurement; it means the shape is one that a single figure describes.

The size words mame, mini, shōhin, chūhin and daihin describe tree size, not pot measurements. No centimetre boundaries are established for them, so we do not give any. The details are under how a size is written and size classes.

Many pots carry characters on the base, on the painted face, or cut into the body. Count them, then look at how the mark was put on: pressed into the clay, cut with a point, or painted. That removes most of the list at once.

The marks index covers the makers and kilns documented here, and every maker in it has a page of their own in the makers section. The index identifies marks. It does not authenticate pots, because a seal can be copied, inherited, or used by a workshop rather than a person.

For a slower walk through shape, glaze and marks on a single pot, read How to look at a bonsai pot. To see pots as they are offered, browse the collection or the YAKUMO JAPAN eBay store.

Found something here that does not match a pot in your hands? Tell us — corrections are how this gets better.