Porcelain Botanicals: The Natural Textures of Ohigashi Alyne

We wound up a steep hill, slivers of morning light peeking through dense clouds as mist clung to the mountains. At the top, we were caught in a sudden rainstorm that stopped as quickly as it started. Grasshoppers like blades of grass leapt to flee our feet, and our eyes caught on a mikan grove thick with bright orange fruit.

Down a narrow road lined with Tobe ware workshops, we stopped at a graceful building with the richest garden on the street. We had reached the atelier of Ohigashi Alyne, nestled in Tobe City, Ehime Prefecture.

An award-winning Tobe ware artist with over forty years of experience, Ohigashi is known for her watercolor-like painting and complexly colored and layered glazes. Her works transcend the realm of everyday craft to reach pinnacles of art.

With the release of her new objet d’art series, the Botanical Textures, we sat down with her to talk vision, process, and inspiration.

It's not that they are realistic, strictly speaking. There is no cactus, fruit, or flower that looks quite like these. But they do breathe with life.

A spherical ceramic botanical with blue-green vertical ridges—evoking leaves, cactus spines, or perhaps seed pods—sat atop a table, looking perfectly at home beside the real wavy-ridged cactus next to it.

Next to it was a pink objet d’art reminiscent of a sea anemone, coral, and flower all at once.

What looked like a cross between a sea urchin and a succulent rested casually in a glass fruit bowl. Awash in glaze that ran and flowed in a kaleidoscope of pale blue, sea green, and indigo, touched here and there with gold like sunlight on water, it reminded me of the sea.

One even rested under a glass bell jar, as if it were a real plant in a terrarium.

Each piece is naturalistic in texture, despite its air of fantasy. No one dot, speckle, or ridge is exactly the same. However, they are symmetrical.

Ohigashi explained that this was an intentional choice. "Nature is symmetrical. So my work is, too."

She walked us through each form's inspiration: durian—a fruit from her native Philippines—flowers, sea urchins, coral, sea polyps.

Even chlorophyll. "I wanted to represent what can't be seen with the naked eye," Ohigashi told us.

Originally trained in horticulture, Ohigashi’s love of nature comes across in every piece.

"In terms of texture," she continued, "there's marine biology and plant biology. I use textures from both."

These textures beg to be touched. After getting permission, I couldn’t help running my fingers over each piece. The smooth glassiness of the glaze and the bumps and ridges under my fingertips—there was something uniquely alluring about it.

With forms familiar yet alien, nostalgic yet never-before-seen, these objets d'art are like ornamental plants—ones that will never dry out, ones that will live forever.

"It's essential to control moisture levels. That helps prevent the porcelain clay from drying out, keeping it moist until it's time to work on it."

After all, a piece like this can't be made all in one go. It takes hours of careful additions for a perfectly formed yet featureless clay body to transform into the complexly textured surface that defines this series of works.

Carefully rotating the porcelain clay in her hands, Ohigashi explained, "It looks like a solid ball, but it's actually hollow. I make this by molding two bowls and combining them together. There are tiny pinholes throughout, so it won't explode in the kiln."

Looking closely, it was impossible to tell the form had ever been two separate halves. Even the pinholes are nearly invisible.

"This is water glass," Ohigashi explained. "It's a mixture of clay, water, and glaze, so it has a color. I use this pipette tool to add dots to the design." She added several between clay ridges as we watched. "It's quite hard to control, actually. It takes practice. Here, try it."

Delighted, I tried pipetting a few drops onto a clay test strip she handed me. Some came out tiny, some fat. It was indeed hard to control. Yet Ohigashi's are exact and even.

When the detail work is done, the piece gets fired once, then glazed, then fired again. For some pieces, Ohigashi uses as many as three layers of glaze to achieve the colors. They have a depth to them, like looking into the tide pool of a mineral-rich sea.

"What about the flowers on top?" I asked. "Isn't it hard to prevent them from breaking off in the kiln?"

"It is," Ohigashi confirmed, 

"but I was pleasantly surprised when I first started doing test pieces, before I was sure the concept would work. I managed to get many that didn't break. From that moment, I knew it would be a success."

Ohigashi's works—and her objets d'art especially—are very different from the archetype of Tobe ware. The most representative pieces of the style are thick, durable items of tableware painted with indigo blue arabesques. So what is it about Ohigashi’s Botanicals that classifies them as Tobe ware?

"It's the clay," Ohigashi told us. "The pottery stone found here in Tobe is unique to the area. You can't get it anywhere else, and you can't export it because raw clay contains bacteria. You can only get it in this part of Japan.

"But," Ohigashi continued, 

"Tobe porcelain clay is hard to work with. It doesn't have as much plasticity as other kinds. You see a lot of Mino ware art pieces, but not Tobe ware—not yet. With my work, I want to expand the possibilities of Tobe ware. I want Tobe ware to spread not just around Japan, but internationally, around the world."

Showing the world what Tobe ware can do while expressing her fresh artistic vision, Ohigashi’s work inspires us. We can’t wait to see more of her creations.