Nezumi Shino Teacup - 230ml

Name: Nezumi Shino Teacup - 230ml
Brand: Various Artists
SKU: US-T223
Price: 24.00 USD
Availability: InStock

$24.00

This Mino-yaki yunomi (teacup) has a classic cylindrical shape and is made in the traditional nezumi shino (鼠志野 - grey shino) style with an abstract design in white against a blue-grey hued backdrop, all under a transparent glaze.

Following the traditional nezumi shino technique, the design is painted on using a clay paste. On top of this, the entire surface is coated with iron-rich oni-ita, and the clay paste of the design areas is scraped off, revealing the bare clay underneath. Finally, the cup is given a feldspar-rich white Shino glaze. In the design areas, the white is visible, but where it overlaps with the iron-rich oni-ita which fires into a brown or black, the two layers combine to produce a soft blue-grey. Areas where the Shino glaze is thin show more oni-ita and appear brown.

The shino (志野) glaze represented a step forward in Japanese ceramics, being the first white glaze developed there, sometime in the mid 1500s. Made predominantly from feldspar, this glaze produces a milky white colour with a surface that is occasionally textured with pinholes, called suana (nest holes) or yuzuhada (ゆず肌 - yuzu skin) in Japanese. Shino chawan were typically hantsutsu-gata (半筒型 - half cylindrical type), which became the popular style for Japanese chawan during the Momoyama era. Undecorated white shino is called mujishino (無地志野) where the main attractions are the glaze’s natural colour variations and the orange-brown hi-iro (火色 - fire colour/marks). This white glaze served as a sort of blank canvas, allowing potters to paint designs using iron glaze in a sub-style called e-shino (絵志野 - painted shino). In addition to white, the glaze could also be made in red as beni-shino (紅志野 - red shino) or a greyish-blue called nezumi-shino (鼠志野 - mouse-coloured shino) or haiiro-shino (灰色志野 - ash-coloured shino)