Raku Family Residence Kiln House

Raku Family Residence Kiln House: Two Kilns, One for Each Colour

The Raku Family Residence Kiln House (樂家住宅窯場, Raku-ke jūtaku kamaba) is a single-storey timber shed attached to the main storehouse in the Raku potters' compound in Kamigyo Ward, Kyoto, and it houses the family's red Raku and black Raku kilns; it is dated to the early Meiji period and was registered as Registered Tangible Cultural Property in 2007.

It measures 3 bays by 2 bays, with a building area of 28 square metres. The roof is hipped-and-gabled, except on the north side where it meets the storehouse and ends in a plain gable, and it is covered in pantiles.

The Agency for Cultural Affairs dates it to the early Meiji period; the Raku Museum dates the rebuilding of the family house to 1855.

Why It Was Registered

The Raku Family Residence Kiln House was listed as a structure that would be difficult to reproduce, and the Agency calls it a pottery facility equipped with valuable kilns. The kilns are part of the registration: the official record describes the building as coming with a black Raku kiln and a red Raku kiln.

The Raku Museum says the family's ways of making and firing have not changed since the ware began, and that the kiln fire on this site has never gone out for good. This is where that claim is put into practice.

Inside: A Red Kiln and a Black Kiln

Two kilns of different kinds share the Raku Family Residence Kiln House. In the north-west corner is the red Raku kiln, fuelled with wood, with a smoke vent rising through the roof above it. Further east is a smaller kiln for black Raku, which the Agency's record calls the main kiln.

Black and red are the two founding colours of Raku tea bowls, and each has traditionally had its own kiln. Two kilns under one small roof turn that division into architecture.

The inner walls and the underside of the roof are coated in clay. In a timber building with open fire inside, that earthen skin keeps heat and sparks away from the wood. From outside it is a modest tiled shed; inside it is a room wrapped in earth.

The layout of the back yard follows the work. The kiln house leans against the main storehouse, and the clay shed stands in the north-west corner, so that clay store, kiln and storeroom sit within a few steps of one another.

Seeing the Kiln House

The Raku Family Residence Kiln House is a working studio at the back of a private home. It cannot be seen from the street and is not open.

Bowls fired here over the generations are on display at the Raku Museum next door. Directions are on the Raku Family Residence page.