Oshinobi dōchū, travelling incognito, shows a Heian noblewoman shielding her face with a kasa hat while journeying in disguise. Two pieces in the collection, by Sato Suigai and Seiju Kon, show how differently that same story can be built in wood.

This chawan was fired at the Kakuzan-gama, a kiln built in 1959 inside the Kyoto headquarters of Ōmoto, a Japanese religious movement, by Kaneshige Sozan, a member of Bizen's most celebrated pottery family. It is signed by Deguchi Eiji, who served as Ōmoto's Sōchō (director) from 1958 to 1962. A single white glaze on this bowl developed rust, near-black and crystalline blue effects during firing, the result of flame position, ash deposit and heat variation inside a wood kiln, not of painting or decoration.

Bizen-yaki is never glazed and never painted. Everything visible on a finished piece was decided during the firing itself, by potters who spend two weeks feeding a kiln by hand, reading the fire instead of a dial. On a return visit to Shibaoka Tōsendō, the Kōzan-gama kiln in Imbe, here is what that actually looks like from the inside.

Every kokeshi carries the place it comes from before it carries anything else. A guide to the eleven regional traditions of Tōhoku, and how to recognise each one on sight.

Perched in the forested hills of Minoh, Katsuo-ji is known throughout Japan as the Daruma Temple, thousands of red daruma cascading down its steps, each one carrying someone's wish. A visit that changed how I see the wooden daruma in our own collection.

Every temple I visit in Japan has the same quality of quiet, and it starts with three things: scent, sound, and a presence that holds the space. Here is how to bring that same intention home, starting with a single kōro and the concept of ma.

Inside the Raku Museum in Kyoto during the Raku Successive Generations exhibition. Chawan from Chōjirō to the 16th Kichizaemon, a quiet garden, and one idea about tradition that stayed with me.

Urushi looks fragile and behaves like the opposite, until it meets a sunny windowsill or a winter radiator. Here is what actually damages lacquerware, what does not, and the handful of habits that keep a piece looking the way it did the day it was finished.

A kokeshi asks for very little once it has found the right spot. Grouped in threes on a shelf, alone on a windowsill out of direct sun, or standing next to something entirely unrelated, like a stack of books or a single dried branch. Here is what I have learned about placing them so they actually get looked at, instead of disappearing into a room.

Every ceramic piece I bring home has already been through decades of hands before mine. A chawan changes colour with tea over the years, a vase collects mineral marks if you let it, and neither of those things is damage. Here is what actually matters when you look after one.

What draws you to a kokeshi is rarely the name on the base. It is the grain showing through the dark wood, the mark the tool left, and the two lines that somehow become a face. A close look at how makers like Usaburo and Sansaku Sekiguchi work with and against the wood itself.

There is a small tiger on my desk with gold worn down to almost nothing on its ears and shoulders. It was made for a Year of the Tiger, in Kyoto, by a kiln lineage going back to 1771. The wear is not damage. It is exactly what the gold was always going to do.