Seto Mono: Telling the story of Japan's ceramic figurine makers through creative ceramic practice

This paper foregrounds the marginalised stories of the makers whose tacit skill and creativity shaped the production of ceramic figurines in Seto City, Japan, during the post-war period. While Seto is recognised as one of Japan’s six ancient kiln sites, the role the ceramic figurine industry played in the city’s post-war recovery has received less attention. Ranging from natural history dioramas to representations of cultural icons like Elvis Presley, these slip-cast ceramic products speak of local industrial ingenuity, while constituting a material record of evolving consumer taste. They embody complex chains of operation, linking international commissioners with Japanese designers and makers.
Reaching its peak in the 1980s, the sudden appreciation of the Yen after the signing of the Plaza Accord (1985) led to a steady decline in the industry. Now only vestiges remain, with a handful of extant businesses. This absent presence haunts the city through abandoned factories and obsolete material culture – a tangible heritage resource increasing at threat from redevelopment. As those involved in the industry age, there is an inexorable loss of the embodied material knowledge upon which it relied. Meanwhile, local authorities attempt to leverage Seto’s ceramic heritage in placemaking agendas, promoting the city as an open-air museum to encourage tourism.
Taking several figurines as case studies, the paper will discuss how art-archaeological and oral history approaches have been adopted to recover the agency and identity of Seto’s figurine makers. Interviews with company owners and former employees reveal insights into the embodied experience of making, an industrial process which nevertheless left some scope for individual creativity. Seto’s ceramic heritage is construed as a distributed design archive through which maker and material are entangled. The continued relevance of these making skills is advocated through the reanimation of redundant plaster moulds to make a new series of ceramic artworks.

*Setomono can refer to ceramics made in Seto, a term which has become synonymous with pottery in the Japanese language. Setomono is also a colloquial term sometimes used by Seto citizens to describe themselves.