10x6.5x2 Inch Yamaaki Rectangle Bonsai Pot #123 – Hand Carved Window Panels, Unglazed, Chop & Nail Signed

The carved window panels are the first thing to look at. They are worked into the side walls by hand, which on a pot this size is slow going with no room to correct a mistake. Yamaaki operated in Tokoname for close to a century under three generations of the Kataoka family, and the kiln is best known for its unglazed work, where the natural clay surface does most of the talking. This piece is unglazed, with a flat rim and a deliberately low profile.

It carries both a chop and a nail signature, and the two are not the same thing. Every Yamaaki pot has a chop, a seal pressed into the clay that is identical across the kiln's entire output and tells you only that the pot came from Yamaaki. The nail signature was scratched in by hand with a pointed tool while the clay was still leather-hard, which means a particular artisan finished this pot personally rather than it simply coming off the line. Hand-signed pieces appear across all three generations, and they are the ones collectors go looking for.

At 10 by 6.5 inches and only 2 inches deep, this is a small, shallow rectangle. That depth suits a developed root system that no longer needs volume, which in practice means deciduous material, a modest group planting, or a tree far enough along that soil mass is not the constraint. The window panels read from the side rather than from above, so give it a position where the pot is seen at eye level instead of looked down into.