About Us

Hi everyone, welcome to my ceramic shop!

If you happen to drop in my shop and start reading this paragraph, I guess you are also a fan of handmade ceramics and share my love for beautiful, artistic yet functional dinnerwares and drinkwares. I started to develop interests in Japanese handmade ceramic wares because I was looking for dinnerwares that are lead-free or at least well below strict modern lead regulation standard. To my disappointment, those dinnerwares that are advertised as lead-free or safe are not really good-looking.

I hope that meals are not only meals and the morning coffee is not just to get me to wake up. I wish that beautiful dinnerwares and drinkwares could make my meal or a cup of coffee more enjoyable and memorable. I want to experience the time flowing and passing by me slowly and remember those moments instead of feeding myself and then rushing for my next meeting.

Humans are experiencing the world through time and space, that's why we love music and beautiful objects. Music decorates time and beautiful objects decorate space. Delicate objects help us keep memories and record the moments that we have experienced. When we look at them, we immediately thought of those peaceful mornings we had that cup of coffee and those people we spent a delightful dinner with.

So I kept looking for dinnerwares and coffee mugs that are both complying with strict lead/food-safe regulations and delicately designed/made. Here it is, the Japanese handmade ceramics and potteries. The Japanese handmade ceramics are well-known for its high quality and strict lead regulation. They have kept the traditional handmade ceramic culture relatively well among all other modern countries. Many of the kilns/shops I shop from have founded nearly 100 years ago and they kept updating their ceramic making skills to adapt to modern needs.

You can feel there's soul in each piece of dinnerwares and my vision is to bring those artworks and safe-to-use dinnerwares and drinkwares to more people who share the passion with me: to experience the beauty without sacrificing the functionality and "safety". I make sure that I understand the manufacturing process (from manufacturer's official website or other reliable sources including official reply/response from the reputable manufacturer or shop) before I import them. I have also personally used home lead-testing kit bought from Lowe's or Home Depot to test each piece that I have listed on this site. Note that home lead-testing kit results can be false positive and false negative, so in addition, I have paid extra fee to ask the suppliers to test many of the plates that I have imported with the certified lead and cadmium testing lab in Japan. I will link those certificates in the product page if they are available. Besides holding the quality standard high, I tried to select each piece with functionality and usage in mind and to embrace the diversity of cultures e.g. what kind of dinnerwares are best suitable for curry dishes, steak dinner, sushi, chinese, korean etc.

I will share more of my ideas of using those dinnerwares to in my official instagram account. You are welcome to follow the Ontologie instagram to get more inspirations about how to use those beautiful ceramics to brighten your meals/coffee/tea time each day!

Welcome to the world of Japanese ceramics and nice to meet you! :)

- Freya
Feb 20, 2024