About

Fresh Citadel started in the front room of a rented machiya in Nada Ward in the spring of 2017. Sakura Maeda had just left a tableware buying role at a department store in Sannomiya and had saved enough to cover six months of rent and materials. The name came from a conversation with a neighbour who described the old neighbourhood as a kind of quiet fortress, a place that had survived the 1995 earthquake and rebuilt itself without much fuss. Sakura liked the contradiction in it, something fresh inside something solid.

The first year was mostly failure. The gas kiln she inherited from the previous tenant ran too hot on the left side and she lost about a third of every batch to warping. She spent the winter of 2017 to 2018 rebuilding the firebox with help from a retired kiln technician she met at a ceramics fair in Osaka. By spring 2018 the kiln was firing evenly and the work started to look the way she had imagined it. The clay body she settled on is a blend she mixes herself, starting from Tamba-region stoneware clay and adding a small percentage of local red clay for warmth. She has used the same recipe since 2019.

Today the studio runs classes on Saturdays, sells work through the gallery and through a small number of restaurants and cafes in Kobe that use her bowls and plates on their tables. Sakura makes everything herself, which means output is limited and the waiting list for custom commissions is usually two to three months. She is not trying to grow the studio into something larger. The machiya fits one person working well, and that is the size she intends to keep it.