We found this set during our second visit to Yamanaka Onsen, in November 2025.

We had returned for an exhibition, hoping to see more of 米谷彰能’s yōkai collection, and on the way to the gallery we decided to stop again at Art551, an antique shop we had first visited in March 2024.

I was not really looking for anything.

But almost as soon as we walked in, I saw an old wooden box tucked away in a corner beneath a table.

It was actually the box that caught me first.

The wood was worn, the ribbon had softened with age, and an old paper label was still attached to one side. There is something about a box like this that immediately makes me curious. Before even knowing what was inside, I wanted to open it.

Inside was a set of five Kutani dishes.

The decoration is anything but quiet. Blue, yellow, red and green sit against the white porcelain, with folded textiles, flowers and patterned forms filling the centre. A thin red line follows the scalloped rim. There is a lot happening, yet the composition somehow holds together.

On the reverse is a 福 — fuku, “good fortune” — mark, a mark that appears on Kutani ware across different periods and workshops. It does not by itself identify a particular maker, but it forms part of the long visual language of Kutani ceramics.

Kutani has always been one of the Japanese porcelain traditions I am drawn to, but it also has a more personal meaning for me.

It was through Kutani that my husband first began to become interested in Japanese porcelain and ceramics. Little by little, what had mostly been my habit of collecting became something we began doing together.

That, however, is another story.

On that November afternoon, I simply knew I wanted this set.

Perhaps it was the colours. Perhaps it was the old box hidden beneath the table. Or perhaps it was the feeling of finding something that had been sitting there quietly, waiting to be noticed.

So I brought it home.

And now, whenever I look at it, I remember not only the dishes themselves, but that walk through Yamanaka Onsen, the exhibition we were heading towards, and the beginning of a collection that gradually became ours.

九谷焼 · Kutani-yaki
古代模様中皿 · Kodai Moyō Chūzara
Set of five porcelain medium dishes with polychrome enamel decoration
Ishikawa, Japan
With original wooden box and worn paper label

Acquired in Yamanaka Onsen, November 2025
Art551