Inside an Arita Kiln: How Porcelain Is Painted, Glazed and Fired

At Sōta-gama, the blue-and-white Arita porcelain begins with a pattern that is not yet blue. The pattern goes on in a pigment the color of strong tea, sometimes almost black, on a body as matte as chalk. The familiar blue and glossy finish develop during the main firing, at around 1,300°C (2,370°F).

This is the third stop in our series on how Arita ware is made. We started at a clay works where porcelain stone becomes clay, then followed that clay to a forming workshop where porcelain takes its shape in plaster molds. On the same June afternoon, a few minutes down the road, we walked into Sōta-gama (惣太窯), a kiln that paints, glazes and fires everyday Arita tableware. My colleague Kazumi, from our customer team, joined me for the visit. Here, we followed the work from the painting desks to the glaze tub and gas kilns.

By Erika · Head of Procurement, My Japanese World · Kiln visit with Kazumi: June 2026

What happens at an Arita kiln?

For the hand-painted blue-and-white Arita ware described here, dried pieces are bisque fired at about 900°C, decorated in cobalt-based gosu pigment, coated in glaze and fired again at around 1,300°C. That second firing turns the glaze to glass and the gray-brown pigment to blue. Pieces with overglaze enamels or gold need one or more additional firings at lower temperatures, according to the decoration.

In Arita’s traditional division of labor, a kamamoto (窯元) is a porcelain producer, not simply the furnace itself. Specialist workshops may supply its clay, molds or formed bodies. Decoration, glazing and firing then bring those contributions together. The arrangement varies from one producer to another.

Exact temperatures and schedules vary by kiln, by glaze and by the size of the load. The figures here are the usual ranges for Arita porcelain, not one kiln’s recipe.

About Sōta-gama

Sōta-gama is based in Yamauchi-chō, Takeo, in Saga Prefecture, near Arita. The kiln’s own history records that Naoya Morokuma established it in 1997 after working at Teizan kiln. Its focus is tableware for the home.

Sōta-gama makes tableware meant to be used every day. Its own website (Japanese) describes leaving throwing marks visible on purpose and keeping the base slightly heavier, so a bowl sits steadily and feels secure in the hand. Its pattern series read like a short course in classic Arita motifs: tako-karakusa (蛸唐草, “octopus” arabesque scrolls), kaben-mon (花弁紋, petal patterns) and ichimatsu (市松, checkerboard).

It is a working production kiln rather than a showroom. On the day we visited, there were painters at every desk, a glazer at the dipping tub, and a kiln quietly firing in the next room.

Inside an Arita kiln: step by step

1. Bisque firing: a first trip through the kiln

The pieces arrive from the forming workshop as greenware, dried but unfired, and so fragile that a careless knock will break them. Their first firing, the bisque or suyaki, takes them to around 900°C. This first firing strengthens the body without bringing it to the dense, vitrified state of finished porcelain. It remains porous enough to absorb pigment and glaze.

Because bisque ware has no glaze to stick, it can be packed tightly into the kiln, with bowls nested inside one another. The glaze firing later will not allow that.

One detail on the painters’ boards says a great deal about how a kiln keeps a series consistent. At the end of a row of plain bisque bowls sat a single finished piece, blue flowers already fired. The finished bowl gives the painter a reference for the spacing of the flowers and the depth of the blue.

2. The painting room

The painting room was quiet. Painters sit at long desks under fluorescent light, each with a cushion to rest the work on, a jar bristling with brushes and a few small bowls of pigment. Boards of bisque ware wait beside them. Finished boards go onto wheeled racks.

The pigment is gosu (呉須), the cobalt-based color behind Japanese blue-and-white, or sometsuke (染付). Historically it was a natural cobalt-bearing mineral imported from China. Today most kilns use a refined, prepared version. In the bowl it looks nothing like the result: a murky gray-brown or near-black liquid. The blue only develops in the high-temperature firing.

The brushes fall into two families. Slim, long-haired brushes are for line work. Fat brushes with a large reservoir of hair, often bound onto a bamboo handle, are for dami, filling in. A painter will have several of each, matched to the scale of the pattern.

3. Sen-gaki: drawing the outline

Everything starts with the line. Holding the piece in one hand and steadying the painting hand against it, the painter traces the outline of the design in fine gosu strokes. On a square bowl, that might be a single flower with two leaves on each side, repeated around the walls.

Bisque absorbs pigment almost on contact, leaving little room to adjust a stroke. The painter turns the bowl steadily, keeping the brush close to the surface as the pattern takes shape. In the clip below, the painter keeps a second brush between his lips so he can switch without putting the bowl down.

4. Dami: flooding in the color

Dami adds the washes of color inside the outline. The painter loads a large brush with diluted gosu until it is heavy with liquid, then lets the pigment flow off the tip into the outlined shapes, coaxing a small pool of color across the surface. The dilution sets the depth of the blue. A kiln may prepare several strengths so that one pattern can carry light and dark tones side by side.

Done well, dami leaves a smooth, even field with no brush marks. Done with intent, it can leave a gentle pooling at one edge that gives the motif depth. Either way it requires the piece to be held at the right angle, so the painter is constantly turning it in the hand.

Another painter was working through a board of small lipped bowls, called katakuchi (片口), adding a radiating flower motif and fine lines around each one. She turned each bowl as she worked, checked the pattern, then set it back in its row.

5. Glazing: dipping and spraying

Once painted, each piece is coated in glaze, the layer that will melt into the glassy skin of the finished porcelain. The glaze is a suspension of finely ground minerals in water; its composition and application affect the fired surface. At Sōta-gama, the glaze sat in a wide steel tub, and it was pink.

The pale pink coating makes the covered areas easy to see against the white body. Its appearance before firing should not be confused with the final glaze color: the finished blue-and-white pieces have a clear, glossy surface.

Dipping is fast and takes real skill. The glazer holds the plate by its edge, slides it into the glaze, lifts it out in one movement and lets the excess run off. Too long in the tub and the glaze will be thick and may crawl or run in the kiln. Too short and it will be thin and dry-looking. Fingers leave bare marks, which are touched up afterward.

Then comes a step most buyers never notice. The foot ring has to be left bare, or the glaze would melt and weld the piece to the kiln shelf. At the dipping station, a yellow sponge roller turns in a shallow bath of water, and each piece’s foot is run across it to wipe the glaze away. Turn over almost any piece of Arita porcelain and you will see that unglazed ring.

At another station, mugs were being glazed in a spray booth. Here a glazer turns each mug in a gloved hand under a spray gun, building up an even coat while an extractor fan draws the mist away.

6. Loading the kiln

Sōta-gama fires in gas shuttle kilns: large steel boxes lined with refractory brick, served by a kiln car that rolls in and out on rails. The car is loaded outside the kiln, which is safer and faster than stacking inside a hot chamber. Kiln shelves, called tana-ita (棚板), are set on refractory posts and built up layer by layer, with each layer packed as fully as the shapes allow.

Loading is a skill in its own right. Heat is never perfectly even inside a kiln: some positions run hotter, some cooler, and a piece’s position can affect the result. Experienced loaders know which pieces and glazes tolerate which spots. On the car we saw, bowls were nested inside one another, which suggests a bisque load. In a glaze firing, pieces must stand apart, because any two glazed surfaces that touch will fuse.

7. The main firing

The main firing is where porcelain becomes porcelain. Over many hours the temperature climbs to around 1,300°C. The feldspar and other minerals in the body melt partially and bind the particles together, so the clay becomes dense, hard and translucent where it is thin. The glaze melts into a continuous layer of glass. And the pieces shrink again, finishing well smaller than they left the mold.

The atmosphere matters as much as the heat. Blue-and-white Arita porcelain is typically fired in reduction, with the gas burners starved of oxygen during the critical stage. The reducing atmosphere affects iron compounds in the body and glaze, helping develop the cool white associated with much Arita porcelain. The cobalt pigment develops its blue during firing; blue itself is not proof of a reduction firing. Heating is followed by controlled cooling before the kiln can be unloaded.

From outside, a firing kiln is undramatic. One was running while we were there, and all you could see was a small orange glow through a spyhole in the steel casing, and a faint warmth. The real activity was on the control panel nearby: an automatic gas kiln controller, with digital temperature readouts and a chart recorder logging the firing curve. Firing in a modern gas kiln means programming that curve, then watching it.

8. Out of the kiln: the blue appears

When the kiln is opened, the dull gray outlines and the brownish washes have become blue. The chalky bisque is now hard, white and glassy, and the pink glaze has vanished. Each piece is inspected for warping, glaze faults, specks and cracks before it is packed. For a blue-and-white piece, the work ends here. For one that will carry red, green or gold, it goes back to the painters for overglaze decoration and further, lower firings.

Look closely at a finished piece and you can read the process backward: the crisp, slightly darker outline from the sen-gaki brush, the softer field of dami inside it, and the depth that comes from seeing the blue through a layer of glass.

Gas kiln or wood kiln?

For most of Arita’s history, porcelain was fired in wood-burning climbing kilns, or noborigama: chains of chambers built up a hillside, fired for days. Today most Arita kilns fire with gas, and some with electricity. The reason is control. A gas kiln can repeat the same temperature curve and the same reduction stage firing after firing, which is what a kiln needs if a customer is to buy one bowl now and a matching one next year.

Wood firing has not disappeared, but it is now mostly used for special firings and artist work, where unpredictability is part of the appeal. For everyday blue-and-white, a modern gas kiln is not a compromise. It gives the kiln close control over a repeatable production process. For more on kiln types across Japan, see our guide to Japanese kilns.

How to recognize hand-painted sometsuke

Not all blue-and-white porcelain is painted by hand. Printed transfers, stamps and screen printing all produce blue patterns that fire just like gosu. They are legitimate techniques, but they are not the same thing. A few clues help:

• Line weight varies slightly. A hand-drawn line swells and tapers with the brush. A printed line is usually even from end to end.
• Filled areas have depth. Dami often shows a soft gradation or slight pooling at one edge. Printed color is typically flat or made of tiny dots.
• Pieces in a set differ a little. On hand-painted pieces, a leaf may sit a few millimeters higher on one bowl than the next. Identical placement on every piece suggests printing.
• Patterns meet naturally at seams. On printed ware, you can sometimes find a join or an overlap where the transfer meets itself.

As with forming methods, these are clues rather than proof. When it matters to you, ask the seller how the pattern was applied.

Choosing Arita porcelain for your table

Knowing how a piece was painted and fired helps you judge what you are buying. It does not replace the practical questions: what you will serve, how often, and how you will wash it.

• Look at the foot. A carefully finished foot ring should feel smooth. Check it before placing the piece on a delicate surface; an unglazed base can still leave marks.
• Expect small variations. Slight differences in painting between pieces are normal for hand-painted ware. Cracks, crawled glaze or a wobbly base are not.
• Check care advice for the exact piece. Underglaze blue is protected by the glaze and holds up well to everyday use. Overglaze colors and gold sit on top of the glaze and need gentler handling. Our ceramic tableware care guide covers the details.

Three pieces to explore

These pieces from our shop connect with the painting and firing described here. They were not made at Sōta-gama; they come from other Arita makers.

Browse our Arita ware collection, or ask our team for help choosing if you would like to compare size, finish or care before ordering.

Continue the series

Go back to the beginning with how porcelain stone becomes Arita clay, or revisit how Arita porcelain is shaped in plaster molds. For the wider history of the town, read Arita: Japan’s timeless porcelain legacy.

Our thanks to everyone at Sōta-gama for letting us walk through the painting room and stand beside a firing kiln. After a day following porcelain from stone to clay to mold, this was the place where it finally looked like something you would put on a table. What stays with me is the painters’ reference bowls: one finished piece at the end of each board, quietly setting the standard for all the others.

Explore our Arita ware collection

Sources and author

This article draws on observations, photographs and video from Erika and Kazumi’s June 2026 visit to Sōta-gama in Yamauchi-chō, Takeo, on the edge of Arita. Kiln background and general production information come from the sources below. Methods and firing schedules vary between kilns; this visit is not a claim that every Arita kiln works in the same way.

• Sōta-gama: about the kiln (Japanese). Location, design approach and pattern series.
• Sōta-gama: founder and workshop team (Japanese). The kiln’s own history and staff roles.
• Exploration of Ceramic Production (English). The sequence of bisque firing, gosu outlining, dami, glazing, main firing and overglaze, with typical temperatures.
• Arita Tourism Association: how Arita ware is made (Japanese). The regional production sequence and typical firing temperatures.

Written by Erika
Head of Procurement at My Japanese World

Erika leads procurement at My Japanese World. Read about Erika, our team and how we select Japanese craft. For questions about a piece featured here, contact our team.