Tamba

Tamba ware (also romanized Tanba) is produced around the Tachikui district of Tamba-Sasayama City, Hyogo Prefecture, with a history of about 850 years reaching back to the late Heian period. Its origin is tied to the same lineage as Tokoname: kiln-firing techniques spread from the Tokai region in eastern Japan, arriving in Tamba and establishing pottery production there as one of the Six Ancient Kilns.

Traditional Tamba ware gets its reddish-brown color from akadobe, an iron-rich clay slip, combined with a greenish-brown natural ash glaze that forms as wood ash vitrifies during long firings in anagama (single-chamber) and noborigama (climbing) kilns built into the local hillsides. As with Bizen and Shigaraki, that ash glaze isn’t applied by the potter directly, so the exact color and pattern on a finished piece depends on how it sat in the kiln, making each result unrepeatable.