Yui Tsujimura

Yui Tsujimura works from within one of Japan's most celebrated ceramic families — the eldest son of Shiro Tsujimura — carrying the Tsujimura name into an unglazed, wood-fired tradition drawn from 5th-century Sueki ware, the blue-grey stoneware style that reached ancient Japan by way of Korea. His signature ash glaze isn't left to chance in the kiln but hand-applied: he brushes an ash slurry, made from calcium-rich red pine, directly onto the piece, controlling how it pools and crystallizes into pockets of deep green during firing. Fired pieces then often go through a second firing, where he chars them with organic matter to drive dark, smoked tones into the surface, occasionally leaving behind chunks of fused, calcified ash where the material didn't fully burn away. Some of his flower vases carry this further into form, shaped after roughly cut sections of bamboo used in tea-ceremony arranging, with the mottled green-grey ash glaze standing in for the hue of mature bamboo and a deliberate crack at the lip echoing how the plant naturally splits as it dries and ages. Across tea bowls, water jars, and vases alike, the result is a narrow, restrained palette of grays, blacks, and crystalline greens with unusual depth for its simplicity — color and texture that read as a controlled, deliberate process rather than something left purely to the kiln.