Collection: Curated Works

During my residency in Arita, Japan, I had the privilege of working alongside a small circle of remarkable makers — each with their own relationship to clay, fire, and technique. What began as an exchange of methods became something deeper: a genuine connection to their process, and to the pieces themselves.

Among them: Sougama, a family-run kiln founded in 1984 by Yuji and Namiko Kusaba (joined more recently by their son Eito) — the only kiln in Arita still practicing the Neriage marbling technique. Wani Studio, a husband-and-wife duo in nearby Hasami — Kenichiro Watajima and Miriam Watajima — whose playful dinosaur and creature series is hand-painted using washizome, a resist-dyeing technique using cut washi paper, with sand worked into the porcelain clay itself for an antique, speckled surface. Jeremie Pare Julien, a Canadian ceramist and art historian working at Kōraku-gama in Arita, whose fine-lined insect studies, tiny trinket boxes, and gold-kintsugi MIMIZU pieces bring a naturalist's eye to porcelain. Cacao Pottery, whose Shizuku and Rhythm series use icchin slip-trailing and hand-carved relief to capture a single droplet meeting water, or a lotus opening. And Nishihara Akira, master ceramicist in Arita and John's collaborator on the Shuhari Collection, whose own hand-thrown and hand-painted vases and chawan carry a lifetime of precision and restraint.

At John Mac Ceramics, that connection matters as much as the craft. To hold a piece made by someone you've watched at the wheel, whose hands you've seen shape the same clay you shape yourself, changes how you see the object — it carries their presence, not just their skill.

This collection brings their work together alongside John Mac's own — a way of sharing what was encountered in Arita, and inviting collectors to discover the breadth of Japanese ceramic technique through the hands that shape it.