Circle line in the centre of your plate.

When you see Onta Ware, you will notice there is a circle line in the centre of it. It is always white.

It looks like part of the design, and it IS part of the design indeed. However, the initial reason of this line isn’t like that. See the below photo.

You see a lots of plates are stacked in the left bottom corner of the photo and this is how most of the plates and bowls are put in the kiln to get fired efficiently. And because of this, the part where a plate surface meets the bottom of the above plate doesn’t get high temperature and remains white and unglazed.

We recommend doing Medome before start using your Onta ware especially if it has the circle line to try to avoid from it getting stained in this area and to make it more durable. Please see our Maintenance page from here.

Having said that, it doesn’t mean your plate is unhygienic if you don’t do Medome. No one died due to non-Medome pottery in Japan for the past 300 years. Just it will change the colour over time like shown in the below photo. This is my plate purchased about 20 years ago.

There is a method not to have this centre circle line. I will explain it next time.