This piece has found its home. It is kept here as a record of what has passed through our hands.
A nezumi-shino (“mouse-grey Shino”) tea bowl by Arakawa Toyozo (1894–1985), designated a Living National Treasure in 1955 for Shino and Setoguro wares — among the very first ceramic artists ever so honoured.
Arakawa did something almost no one had done: he brought a lost art back to life. In 1930, digging at an old kiln site in Mino, he found a single Shino shard that proved these wares had originally been made in Mino, not Seto as long believed — rewriting the map of Japanese ceramic history. He then built his own kiln to resurrect the Momoyama-period technique, carving through an iron slip to leave the pale figures that give nezumi-shino its name.
His work is held by the Victoria & Albert Museum, among other major collections.
