This is the first book in English to document what Japanese porcelain was like before it was "discovered" in Europe, and thereafter made with a view to foreign, rather than Japanese, tastes. It is also the first in-depth study of the working practices of the pottery kilns of the seventeenth century. Impey assesses the individual kilns at Arita and reconstructs a detailed and fascinating picture of how these beautiful, little-known objects were made.