We asked a Mashiko-ware ceramist to create a sake set. He told us that in his father’s time, the family workshop usually created only large vessels; recently, however, smaller-sized works of Mashiko ware for practical use were becoming popular. We came up with Namida, a set consisting of a simple vertical sake cup and a shorter one, and two lipped bowls, one big and the other small. The glazes applied to the pieces are of two types: ame-yu brown glaze and namijiro-yu white glaze. Mysteriously, sake seems to taste different depending on the glaze of the vessel—but that, we think, is the magic of ceramics at work.
