Have you ever bought a piece by an independent maker, found fine crack-like lines, black dots or tiny holes on the surface, and worried that it might be faulty?<\/p>\n
To put it plainly: crazing (kanny\u016b), iron spots (tetsupun or iron flecks), pinholes and the like cannot be judged as “faulty” or “returnable” simply because they exist.<\/b> In technical terms they are sometimes treated as defects; in other cases they are deliberately incorporated as part of a maker’s expression, or accepted as the individual variation of a given piece.<\/p>\n
In practice, the Pottery Day official site explains that crazing “is sometimes regarded as a flaw,” while in other cases it is turned into a deliberate pattern. Toki City, a ceramics-producing area, also gives specific guidance on crazing, iron spots and pinholes as individual variation in handmade ceramics.<\/p>\n
Cracks that reach the body of the piece, chips, sharp breakage and leaks are another matter. The fact that a piece is handmade, or made by an independent maker, does not mean you have to accept problems that affect its use.<\/b><\/p>\n
This article sorts things into three tiers\u2014“likely no problem,” “worth checking with the maker or shop,” and “stop using”<\/b>\u2014so that even first-time buyers of maker’s pieces can judge with confidence, setting out the difference between crazing, black spots, pinholes, ishihaze and glaze unevenness on the one hand, and the breakage genuinely worth watching for on the other.<\/p>\n
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