Shigaraki White Vase, Hechimon Kirara Ikebana with Gold Kakitsuke 25 cm

A tall asymmetric flower vase from the Hechimon (へちもん) art-vase line of Marui Seitō (丸伊製陶) in Shigaraki, Shiga Prefecture. The body is built in Shigaraki's classic coarse stoneware clay — visible as the brown-and-white speckle running through the surface — then dressed in shiro-geshō (白化粧), a white slip that softens the rugged Shigaraki ground into the pattern named きらら kirara, "sparkle" in Japanese, for the way light catches on the speckled slip.

A single side of the rim has been left as yabure-guchi (破れ口) — the deliberate "broken-mouth" silhouette that Hechimon is known for, where the kiln-master interrupts the wheel's circle to leave a raw, irregular edge. Down from that broken rim runs a vertical band of kakitsuke (掻き付け) drag-line incisions — finely combed grooves filled with gold pigment (金彩) — so that the vase reads as a white wabi-sabi silhouette interrupted by a single rough golden cascade.

The form is taller than the typical tabletop bud vase (25.5 cm / 10 inches), and the silhouette narrows toward the foot — best suited for a single dramatic stem (one tall branch of pampas grass, one curved willow, one single sunflower) rather than a dense arrangement. The mouth opening is oval and asymmetric — well-matched to ikebana practice, where the vessel's irregularity is part of the composition.

About this maker

Made by Marui Seitō / Hechimon Shigaraki-yaki in Shiga Prefecture, Japan, curated by ZenKiln

Marui Seitō is a Shigaraki kiln that runs its contemporary art-vase output under the brand name Hechimon — Shigaraki dialect for "out-of-the-ordinary thing" — and is one of the largest single-supplier verticals in the ZenKiln catalog. Their signature is the contrast of a soft, deliberate Shigaraki-clay body against a single intervention: a broken rim, a band of ash, a cascade of gold. This Shiro-geshō Kirara piece is from the white-slip family within that line.

Shigaraki is named in METI's official "Six Ancient Kilns" designation (六古窯) — the six Japanese ceramic regions with the longest continuous production history (since the Heian era, ca. 12th century). Most collectors associate Shigaraki with the tanuki (raccoon-dog) garden figures or the rough wood-fired tea ceramics; the Hechimon line sits in a different, contemporary register — stoneware as sculpture for the modern Japanese interior.