If we look at the history of pottery in Japan, we can see how long it took until potters were able to produce white coloured vessels.
In ancient times, when earthenware and Sue ware were fired, it was natural for pottery to be earthy brown in colour, but since the Middle Ages, when ceramic production began, glazing techniques were developed. In the Mino region (current Gifu Prefecture) of the 16th century, white Shino ware made with feldspar glaze was established.
However, the white ceramics like Shino ware were usually produced by applying a white coating to an earth-coloured base. When talking about white pottery including the base itself, it must be white porcelain first produced in the Hizen region of Kyushu (Saga and Nagasaki Prefectures) by Korean potters in the early Edo period.

The raw material for porcelain is not earth, but porcelain clay made by grinding and refining pottery stones containing a substance called kaolin: in other words, stone.
The porcelain clay used to be a special material that could only be obtained in the production area, but now, it can be ordered wherever you live. As a result, the range of porcelain production has expanded. Today, even individual makers who do not belong to the community of the production area are also free to create according to their own aesthetic sense.

The vessel in the image is the work of Takahiro Yahagi, a ceramic artist based in Yamagata Prefecture.
The porcelain clay is moulded so thinly that light can penetrate it, and some parts are left unglazed to highlight the natural white colour of the clay.
In pre-modern porcelain, the value of the craft was increased by the “addition” of decorations such as painting. In contrast, Yahagi’s work emphasises the whiteness of the porcelain clay through a minimalist aesthetic of “subtraction”. The dignified appearance of his work can be understood as an antithesis to the disorderly overflow of materials in the modern age.

Perhaps representing a return to their original fundamental ethos, the serene white porcelain vessels seem to project the simple longing for the white colour that our ancestors had in their minimalist forms.
If we can feel their silent presence with our eyes, hands and hearts, we may be able to re-evaluate the ideal distance between the overflowing material civilisation and ourselves as modern-day people.