Collection 1. Miyazaki

The mark of this workshop is found on items which range from having very simple to quite sophisticated designs. This is, so far, the only item in the collection with the Miyasaki mark, which is 宮崎. The first character ‘miya’, 宮, has many meanings but here might be ‘Shinto shrine’. The second character ‘saki’ means ‘promontory’ or ‘cape’. Joined they would make Miyazaki (s changing to z), which romantically we might think of as ‘Cape where the Shinto Shrine is’.

Note that there seems some confusion in some sources which have the initial character as 高, which means ‘high’ and would give ‘Takasaki’ or ‘Takazaki’. The mark is clearly not this.

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There are six roundels, with some similarity to those seen in other Kyoto workshop, but also with a couple of attractive new ideas (e.g. ref 81g).

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One interesting feature is the use of spirals around the neck.

There are many other objects in the collection that use a similar feature, but this is not enough to tie them together in any way as yet.