is an artistic technique for creating Japanese pottery in multiple colors of

clay Clay is a type of fine-grained natural soil material containing clay minerals (hydrous aluminium phyllosilicates, e.g. kaolin, Al2 Si2 O5( OH)4). Clays develop plasticity when wet, due to a molecular film of water surrounding the clay par ...

. The technique is also called , although this term also refers to the throwing of multiple colored clays on a wheel.

History

is a contemporary Japanese term. Marbling ceramic techniques were used in

Egypt Egypt ( ar, مصر , ), officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, is a transcontinental country spanning the northeast corner of Africa and southwest corner of Asia via a land bridge formed by the Sinai Peninsula. It is bordered by the Mediter ...

and

China China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. It is the world's most populous country, with a population exceeding 1.4 billion, slightly ahead of India. China spans the equivalent of five time zones and ...

and through the Romans to the

West West or Occident is one of the four cardinal directions or points of the compass. It is the opposite direction from east and is the direction in which the Sunset, Sun sets on the Earth. Etymology The word "west" is a Germanic languages, German ...

. Early ceramics in

Stoke-on-Trent Stoke-on-Trent (often abbreviated to Stoke) is a city and Unitary authorities of England, unitary authority area in Staffordshire, England, with an area of . In 2019, the city had an estimated population of 256,375. It is the largest settlement ...

use more than one colour of clay for decorative effect. In England this was referred to as

agateware Agateware is pottery decorated with a combination of contrasting colored clays. The name agateware is derived from the agate stone, which when sliced shows multicolored layers. This pottery technique allows for both precise and thought out patte ...

. In Japan there are a few pieces from the Momoyama period, and

Edo period The or is the period between 1603 and 1867 in the history of Japan, when Japan was under the rule of the Tokugawa shogunate and the country's 300 regional '' daimyo''. Emerging from the chaos of the Sengoku period, the Edo period was characteriz ...

, as well as extant pieces of , that display marbled ceramics. There was an explosion in popularity of the technique from about 1978–1995 in Japan, due probably to Aida Yusuke's advertising and to Matsui Kousei, who refers to his work as . The term started being used in the 1970s to describe related kanji ''neriage''. Yusuke Aida was on a television commercial for Nescafé and it seems to have entered the vocabulary at about that time when his nerikomi coffee cups were available to the first people contacting the advertisers. It was used in the

Tang dynasty The Tang dynasty (, ; zh, t= ), or Tang Empire, was an Dynasties in Chinese history, imperial dynasty of China that ruled from 618 to 907 AD, with an Zhou dynasty (690–705), interregnum between 690 and 705. It was preceded by the Sui dyn ...

in 7th-century

there are at least two

Chinese Chinese can refer to: * Something related to China * Chinese people, people of Chinese nationality, citizenship, and/or ethnicity **''Zhonghua minzu'', the supra-ethnic concept of the Chinese nation ** List of ethnic groups in China, people of va ...

characters to describe variations of this technique (one surface, one structural).

Technique

In , a design is created in such a way that it extends through a long block of clay, akin to the

murrine Murrine (singular: murrina) are colored patterns or images made in a glass cane that are revealed when the cane is cut into thin cross-sections. Murrine can be made in infinite designs from simple circular or square patterns to complex detailed ...

canes of

millefiori Millefiori () is a glasswork technique which produces distinctive decorative patterns on glassware. The term millefiori is a combination of the Italian words "mille" (thousand) and "fiori" (flowers). Apsley Pellatt in his book ''Curiosities of ...

glasswork. By slicing thin slabs of the block, the design can be repeated, to either be reassembled in repetition or applied to a larger piece.

References

External links

*http://nerikomi.blogspot.com in Japanese *http://www.yusukeaida.co.jp/ {{Japanese ceramics Artistic techniques Japanese art terminology Japanese pottery Japanese words and phrases

History

Technique

See also

References

External links