I found the bowl in a regional auction. The listing was basic — “Japanese translucent porcelain bowl”, estimated at £50. I went to view it out of curiosity. The photos were clear, and something about the shape caught my attention: precise, balanced, unusually delicate. I ended up buying it for £20.
I didn’t know the maker, but I knew it was something.
When I held it to the light, the pierced decoration appeared — tiny floral motifs that lit up like fireflies. That technique is called Hotarude (蛍手), or “firefly hand.” It’s one of the most technically demanding decorative methods in Japanese porcelain. The base is carved into an openwork pattern, then filled with a transparent glaze and fired, leaving light-catching voids within the porcelain itself. It’s rare, difficult, and beautiful when done well.
Flipping the bowl over, I found an underglaze blue mark: a circled T above a line of kanji characters. I posted it in a Japanese ceramics forum, hoping someone might recognise it.
They did. The translation came back: Teikado Higuchi sei (棣華堂 樋口製) — “Made by Higuchi of the Teikado kiln.”
I’d never heard of him. And neither had most collectors.
To get a clearer sense of what I had found, I turned to Peter Combs of bidamount.com, one of the leading experts on Japanese ceramics in the West. After examining detailed images and the base mark, he opened his appraisal with a line that said it all:
“Kieran, you’ve found yourself quite a thing.”
Peter confirmed the piece was genuine, and more than that — exceptional.
He explained that Teikado Higuchi was well known in Japan during his lifetime, particularly among the upper circles of society, but that he simply didn’t produce enough work to leave a visible footprint in today’s collector market. That absence, he noted, is precisely why “you won’t find him in Christie’s, Sotheby’s or Bonhams”.
Not because the work isn’t good — but because it’s been forgotten.
He added:
“As a result, you got the bowl for nothing — and I would have bought it in a heartbeat.”
What stood out most was the level of detail Peter observed:
He called it:
“A very, very nice piece of porcelain. You’ve bought something of genuine quality. And if you’re a collector, that’s what you want.”
In particular, he highlighted the shape and form — the bowl’s elegant balance, the control over thin porcelain walls, the refined foot. All of it, he said, pointed to a highly capable maker operating well above the norm.
Then came the highest comparison:
“This, as a piece of pottery, competes with the very best of the Nabeshima workshops — not the general Arita ones, but the real Nabeshima kilns that made porcelain for the Japanese Imperial family.”
He ended with a quiet prediction:
“One day, someone’s going to do a show of Higuchi’s work. Because it’s that good.”
Hearing that from someone of Peter’s immesnse knowledge experience didn’t just validate the find, it reframed it. This wasn’t just a nice piece of porcelain. It was a lost chapter of Japanese ceramic history, and by pure chance, it now lives on in my collection.
Higuchi Haruzane (樋口治実, also rendered as Higuchi Harumi, 1851–1930) was a potter based in Takeo City, Saga Prefecture, deep in the mountains of Odashi, Nishikawanobori-cho. He established the Teikado kiln and developed a highly refined export porcelain now known as Ganju ware (含珠焼), sometimes romanised as Kanju.
Higuchi’s work wasn’t just decorative — it was technically innovative. In 1887, he obtained a patent for his pierced-glaze technique, later known as Ganju ware, which was praised as “more exquisite than Ming-era Hotarude” by later historians. The History of Hizen Ceramics notes the superiority of his firing techniques and translucency control compared even to classical Chinese works.
In 1893, Higuchi exhibited his porcelain at the World’s Columbian Exposition (World’s Fair) in Chicago, where it was awarded and highly praised. The Tokyo National Museum references this directly in its commentary, stating the work was “recognised for its beauty and was awarded a Special Honorary Gold Medal”.
Despite this early recognition, his kiln only operated for around 20 years during the Meiji period, and relatively few pieces survived. A monument now stands in Odashi marking the birthplace of Ganju ware. His other remaining documented work exists in museum collections only.
In the late 19th century, as Japan was still carefully curating its cultural narrative for Western audiences, Eliza R. Scidmore, a pioneering travel writer and authority on Japanese art, previewed her upcoming feature in Harper’s Weekly. She singled out Higuchi Haruzane as “the great artist” of the Porcelain Province of Japan - writing of him in the same breath as the period’s defining ceramic artisans.
That reference appears in The Journal of Education, where on January 20, 1898, Scidmore mentions:
“...will treat of the great artist, Higuchi Haruzane…”
(The Journal of Education, Vol. 47, No. 3, 1898, p. 46.)
To put that into context: this isn’t just an antique, not just a bowl. it’s a museum-tier work by a master whose name once graced the pages of Western art discourse.
And now, because that long-ago moment of recognition didn’t fully take root, I'm holding the only private example I’ve ever seen.
In a pivotal scholarly article published in East Asian History, Judith Snodgrass draws attention to Higuchi Haruzane’s extraordinary role in the Meiji-era revival of Japanese ceramics. Writing about Japan’s participation in the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair, she singles out Higuchi as a master craftsman who did not merely emulate Chinese traditions but surpassed them.
Higuchi’s work, she notes, was a groundbreaking Japanese interpretation of the Chinese “grains of rice” technique — a method where the porcelain body is pierced and then filled with clear glaze to create light-catching translucency. While Chinese potters had used this method decoratively, Higuchi elevated it, carving plum blossoms in such detail that even the veining and stamens of the petals were preserved in transparency. According to contemporary reports cited in the article, his pieces were “more elaborate and… more imposing” than anything produced by modern Chinese kilns.
Snodgrass quotes The Japan Weekly Mail, which observed:
“He essays more than the Chinese master ever attempted… His glazes surpass the green-tinged imperfection of inferior recent Chinese work, showing instead the clean whiteness and softness of surface of the Qianlong prototype of the eighteenth century.”
His vases sold for as much as $500 at the fair (an enormous sum in 1893). Yet as Snodgrass writes, Higuchi’s ambition was unmistakable. In the context of Japan asserting itself on the world stage, his porcelain stood as a symbol of national artistry and innovation. These were not traditional Japanese forms, but new objects made with new techniques, for a new era of global trade and cultural competition.
Today, only a handful of his works are known to survive, held in museum collections in Tokyo and Takeo. To hold one in private hands is to possess a fragment of a forgotten revolution in Japanese ceramic history - a direct link to the moment Japan declared it could match, and exceed, the achievements of even the most revered Chinese dynasties.
Citation:
Judith Snodgrass, Exhibiting Meiji Modernity: Japanese Art at the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition, East Asian History, no. 31 (2006), pp. 75–91.
https://cpb-us-w2.wpmucdn.com/voices.uchicago.edu/dist/3/1229/files/2018/07/Snodgrass-Exhibiting-Meiji-Modernity-Japanese-Art-at-the-Columbian-Exposition-June-2006-2iwqrtf.pdf
These extraordinary images, originally published in an American magazine around 1898, offer unparalleled visual confirmation of Higuchi Haruzane’s pivotal role in developing Ganju-yaki, and the exceptional craftsmanship of his Teikado kiln.
There are currently only three known museum-held examples of Higuchi’s porcelain:
In 2015, fourteen surviving pieces were donated to Takeo City by Higuchi's great-grandchildren, Takayuki and Yuko, marking the first significant public resurfacing of his legacy in generations.
Outside of these, there are no documented sales, no auction results, and almost no known private ownership. The bowl I found may be the only example currently in the hands of a collector.
This bowl is not important because it’s valuable - though it might become so.
It matters because it shouldn't exist out here in the wild.
It should have been lost to time, or locked behind glass. Instead, it was overlooked, mislabelled, and sold for £20.
But it's a masterwork in miniature. The pierced decoration is flawlessly executed, the porcelain body thin and glowing, the balance precise. The base mark is clear and verifiable — not decorative, not fake. This is a documented piece by a museum-tier craftsman, working in obscurity at the end of the 19th century.
It sits somewhere between the pierced porcelain of Hirado, the minimalist refinement of Song dynasty Ding ware, and the ambition of Japan’s Meiji export kilns. But it’s none of those. It’s something else — the voice of a craftsman who was once known, then forgotten.
And perhaps, now, remembered again.
The story of Higuchi Haruzane isn’t finished. It was interrupted.
His porcelain was once admired on the world stage, then hidden away, kept alive in small museums and fading family records. But with collectors beginning to rediscover the names that history skipped, there’s every chance that Ganju ware will return to prominence - not as mass-market antiques, but as rare echoes of a craftsman ahead of his time.
This bowl, now part of my collection, will be waiting.
https://ameblo.jp/yuyu-chiba/entry-12799565791.html
https://bunka.nii.ac.jp/heritages/detail/543089
https://bunka.nii.ac.jp/heritages/detail/210376
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Teikado Higuchi, Higuchi Haruzane, Higuchi Harumi, Ganju ware, Kanju ware, Hotarude porcelain, pierced Japanese porcelain, Meiji period ceramics, Takeo Saga pottery, Japanese export porcelain, rare antique bowl, forgotten Japanese kiln, Japanese porcelain World’s Fair, 1893 Chicago Exhibition pottery, antique auction finds Japan, firefly hand pottery, museum Japanese ceramics, Tokyo National Museum porcelain
