Bizen rough-clay square dish

This is a square Bizen coarse-clay plate by Koji Nakahara, who studied under Fumio Kawabata and aims to create works that suit modern life. It is a quintessential piece by Nakahara, designed to offer both the practical benefits of glazed pottery—such as resistance to stains and a smooth texture—and the evolving character of Bizen clay as it ages through use. Crafted with great precision, the work has a sophisticated air, reflecting the skills Nakahara has honed while creating tableware for restaurants and high-end dining establishments. For this piece, he applied a green glaze over a base of coarse Bizen clay; the glaze has reacted with the components of the clay to produce a remarkably deep, rich green. The plate was fired in a wood-burning kiln, allowing golden sesame-seed ash markings (kigo-ma) to settle over the green glaze, providing a lovely accent to the vermilion hue of the coarse clay and the deep green glaze. Paper box
Diameter 22.0cm × 21.9cm × Height 1.4cm Koji Nakahara was born in Osaka Prefecture in 1978. He graduated from the advanced course at Nara College of Arts in 2000 and the Bizen Ceramic Center in 2001. That same year, he began his apprenticeship under Fumio Kawabata, and in 2007, he joined the Kaneshige Ritoen pottery. Since then, he has actively exhibited his work at the Japan Traditional Kogei Exhibition and various other juried competitions. He is currently an associate member of the Japan Kōgei Association.