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A wide, low Tamba ware mug by Shozo Gama with diagonal hand carved facets, a deep lapis blue glaze on the lower body transitioning to pale cream at the rim, and a dark loop handle, photographed against a white background.
Tamba Ware Large Faceted Mug Lapis Blue Glaze
Tamba Ware Large Faceted Mug Lapis Blue Glaze
Shozo Gama

Tamba Ware Large Faceted Mug Lapis Blue Glaze

Sale price$69.00

What arrests the eye first is the color. A deep, saturated blue covers the lower body with an intensity that shifts between indigo and cobalt depending on the light, pooling with particular depth within the diagonal facets carved across the exterior. Toward the rim, the glaze recedes into pale stone and cream, the transition neither abrupt nor entirely gradual, the kind of result that only emerges from a kiln rather than a plan. Shozo Gama works within the Tamba ceramic tradition, one of Japan's six ancient kilns with an unbroken history reaching back over 800 years, centered in the hills of Hyogo Prefecture. The wide, low proportioned form and the hand carved facets speak to Tamba's heritage of functional pottery shaped by a confident, unhurried hand. A dark, smoothly formed handle completes the piece. This is a mug that asks to be held slowly.
A wide, low Tamba ware mug by Shozo Gama with diagonal hand carved facets, a deep lapis blue glaze on the lower body transitioning to pale cream at the rim, and a dark loop handle, photographed against a white background.
Tamba Ware Large Faceted Mug Lapis Blue Glaze Sale price$69.00

Meet the Artisan

Shozo Gama

Shozo Gama stands on the northern edge of Tachikui, the historic pottery village of Tamba Sasayama, set on elevated ground where the workshop and gallery open onto the seasonal mountain landscape of Hyogo Prefecture. Here, surrounded by the unhurried rhythms of the Tamba hills, Ichino Motokazu and his son Ichino Shusaku work within one of Japan's most enduring ceramic traditions, shaping each piece entirely by hand from local Tamba clay.

Shusaku Ichino, the third generation of the kiln's practice, has developed a voice that is at once rooted in tradition and quietly forward-looking. Working with wood-fired kilns and ash glazes that shift and deepen through the firing, he pursues the powerful, grounded character that defines the finest Tamba ware, while bringing his own considered sensibility to form and surface. The result is work that carries the weight of 800 years of craft without being bound by it.

From tea bowls and flower vessels to tableware made for daily use, every piece that leaves Shozo Gama reflects the same conviction: that the most meaningful objects are those shaped with patience, fired with intention, and made to belong in the hands and on the tables of those who will use them.