Mino ware vs Seto ware, what is the difference 美濃焼

How are Mino ware and Seto ware related?

Seto ware is pottery from Seto in Aichi Prefecture, where potters first made glazed pottery in Japan, and Mino ware is pottery from eastern Gifu, made later by potters who moved there from Seto. The two kiln districts sit close together.

Potters from the Seto area settled in Mino before the Azuchi-Momoyama period, and the four glazes most people now call Mino ware, Ki-Seto, Setoguro, Shino and Oribe, grew out of that move. The Japanese word for pottery in general, setomono, comes from Seto's own name, and Seto was the site of one of the Six Ancient Kilns of Japan. The Six Ancient Kilns association, which covers Japan's oldest kiln towns, puts Seto's range plainly: "there is nothing that Seto cannot make."

The two differ on four things:

• Region: Seto is the city of Seto in Aichi Prefecture; Mino is the Tono region of eastern Gifu Prefecture, mainly the cities of Toki, Tajimi, Mizunami and Kani.
• Clay: Seto's local kibushi and gairome clay contains almost no iron and fires white; Mino has no single body, and its wares range from thin porcelain to heavy stoneware.
• Glazes: Seto's glazes include Kiseto, Setoguro, Shino, Oribe, tetsuaka, an iron red glaze, and haigusuri, an ash glaze; Mino's four Momoyama era styles are Ki-Seto, Setoguro, Shino and Oribe.
• Known for: Seto gave Japan the word setomono and made the country's first glazed ware; Mino now makes roughly half of Japan's ceramic tableware.

What is Mino ware?

Mino ware is pottery made in the Tono region of eastern Gifu Prefecture, mainly in the cities of Toki, Tajimi, Mizunami and Kani. The name points at a place, not at a look. That is the first thing to get straight, because a Mino plate can be thin white porcelain with a printed rim, or heavy stoneware under a thick crackled glaze, and both are correctly called Mino ware. We carry that same range ourselves: a blue grass pattern deep plate at $17.20 sits a few shelves from a tokusa linework teapot at $38.00, and both are Mino ware.

It is an official name as well as a regional one. Mino ware was designated a traditional craft by Japan's then Ministry of International Trade and Industry on 22 July 1978.

I have been in the Japanese-goods trade since 2013. Mino is the name I type more than any other, and if you own Japanese tableware bought in the last few decades, some of it is probably from there.

Where is Mino, and why did pottery grow there?

Mino is the old province covering the southern half of what is now Gifu Prefecture, and the kiln towns sit in its eastern corner, the Tono area. Firing there goes back a long way. Mino ware developed out of the Sue ware made in the Heian period (794-1185), and from the Kamakura period onward the kilns there were firing the Old Seto style of glazed pottery in cellar kilns built into the slopes.

What turned it into a craft centre was the tea ceremony. Potters from the Seto area settled in Mino before the Azuchi-Momoyama period.

Then it swung back. From the early Edo period the kilns put more emphasis on daily necessities, and mass production, arriving in the Meiji period, made Mino ware widely available. That last stretch is why Mino is an industry and not a handful of studios.

What glazes and styles come from Mino?

Four styles are the ones people name, Ki-Seto, Setoguro, Shino and Oribe, and together they are called Mino-Momoyama ware. All four came out of the same short, intense period in the Momoyama era.

Ki-Seto is a pale yellow glaze, usually carved with lines or floral motifs and often mottled green where copper has run. Setoguro is black. Shino is a thick feldspar glaze that appeared in the Momoyama period; the grey version, nezumi-shino, gets its colour from an iron-rich slip that is scraped back before firing. Oribe is green and black with geometric pattern, and it carries the name of the tea master Furuta Oribe, under whose influence it developed. Our Oribe glaze green mug at $18.00 carries that name in its own title, which is the standard we hold to.

Worth saying plainly: those are Mino's historical styles. Modern tableware borrows the vocabulary all the time, and a green-glazed dinner plate gets called "Oribe style." That is fine, but it is not the same claim. I don't describe anything as Oribe or Shino unless the maker's own title says so.

How do you use and wash it?

Hand-wash it in warm water with a soft sponge, dry it properly, and never stack it damp. A five glazes sake cup set at $56.00 and a barrel shaped green teacup at $12.00 wash the same way.

Browse the tableware collection to see what we currently have in from the Mino kilns.

Quick answers

These are the questions people ask us most often about Mino ware, answered briefly.

Where is Mino ware made? In the Tono region of eastern Gifu Prefecture, mainly the cities of Toki, Tajimi, Mizunami and Kani. Mino is the old province name for the southern half of what is now Gifu.

Are Oribe and Shino the same thing as Mino ware? They are styles that came out of the Mino kilns, not separate places. Ki-Seto, Setoguro, Shino and Oribe are the four historical Mino-Momoyama styles. A modern piece described as "Oribe style" is borrowing the vocabulary, which is a different claim.

How much of Japan's tableware is Mino ware? Roughly half. Gifu Prefecture produced ¥19.71 billion of a national ¥36.61 billion in ceramic tableware in METI's 2021 economic structure survey, a 53.8% share; Gifu's tourism body puts the figure at about 60%.

What is the difference between Mino ware and Seto ware? Potters from the Seto area settled in Mino before the Azuchi-Momoyama period.

What is the difference between Japanese porcelain and stoneware? Fine porcelain and heavier stoneware bodies come out of the same district, so the Mino name alone does not identify the body; our guide, Is Japanese pottery dishwasher and microwave safe, explains how each is looked after.