“Seisai mon tsubo” vase (青彩文壺), Seto stoneware (瀬戸焼), Katō Keiya (加藤敬也)

This Seto stoneware vase has an ovoid shape with an oval cross-section, solid and compact, slightly narrower at the top. The silhouette is slightly irregular, and the rim, simply tapered, is intentionally undulating. The piece has neither a foot nor a pronounced base.

The surface is dominated by an olive-green glaze, laid over a beige body that shows through in irregular transparencies. The glaze thickens in places, creating areas of shadow beneath the material, then blisters and granulates, eventually forming a thick, almost mineral-like skin that alters the light depending on the viewing angle. The decoration here is entirely determined by the firing process and the surface tension of the glaze, in an aesthetic of depth rather than pattern.

About the artist

Katō Keiya (加藤敬也, born in 1935 in Aichi Prefecture) is a ceramicist associated with the historical Seto region, particularly the Seto-Akazu and Obara areas, where he developed a body of work attentive to ash glazes and firing effects (窯変, yōhen). His approach favors deliberately simple forms, allowing the glaze to compose the surface through variations in thickness, density, and controlled imperfections.

He was selected ten times for the Nihon Gendai Kōgei Bijutsu-ten (Japan Contemporary Craft Exhibition) and the Nitten, and some of his works exhibited at these shows were officially acquired in Japan, with one also being selected for long-term conservation by the city of Seto. He participated in six traveling exhibitions abroad, and it is recorded that he presented a tea bowl to the Emperor and Empress at the request of Princess Kitashirakawa.

He built a wood-fired kiln in Obara called Sasagama (笹窯), an important milestone in his practice, his work being based on mastering the cooking atmospheres, the ashes and their reactions on the surface.

Dimensions: approx. 24 cm (height); approx. 13 cm (diameter).
Conservation: the work is preserved in its original tomobako, signed.