I visited the Portland Art Museum in Oregon in the summer of 2016, and I was fascinated by an ancient Japanese pot I found there. 

Later learning more about the time period and studying additional pieces, I am still fascinated by the sophistication in design and playfulness that shines through the roughness of these ancient earth-fired Jomon pots.

Mine is not exactly to scale from the original Katsusaka Pot I first saw in the Portland Museum, but it's a close attempt at a copy. It was fired using a modern kiln instead of the traditional fire pit method.

I started with Raku clay, which fires bright white, and then fired iron oxide over it to give it a rusty finish similar to the original.