Ri Sanpei introduces the ancient Japanese art of Arita ware to a new generation of collectors. The name Arita – and Imari, for that matter – gets its name from the port, as two rivers of the same name flow through the innermost part of it, and this is where the finished products were originally shipped out from. To make this bowl, hand-selected porcelain ore passes through four stages before it’s even shaped. Once formed, the decorative bowl is painted in the traditional sometsuke style – which features rustic Chinese designs evoking the natural world – and finished with the slight imperfections only a human touch can achieve. The blue and white palette seen here is true to sometsuke in the 1600s; it wasn’t until later that this expanded into reds and golds.