Third in the Attractions Skull Mug series, this edition arrives in a fully limited white-on-white colorway: white glaze over a white porcelain body. The form reproduces a rare vintage skull mug made in the 1950s for export to the United States, an original that seldom surfaces today, brought back as a piece of Hasami ware from Nagasaki Prefecture.

Hasami sits next to Arita and Imari, the Saga Prefecture regions whose porcelain carries the better-known names. Its own ceramic history runs back more than 400 years to the Edo period, built on local porcelain stone and a division-of-labor production system that at one point supplied a third of Japan's domestic market. Much of that output was shipped under the Arita name, which kept Hasami itself relatively unknown; today it is recognized as a traditional craft in its own right, both in Japan and abroad.

The mug is porcelain made from porcelain stone — what Japanese potters call ishimono, "stone things," as opposed to tsuchimono, the clay-based earthenware. It is the hardest of the ceramic families and fully non-absorbent, with the glass-like translucency and smooth, hard surface that define the material.

Production follows the traditional Hasami sequence. Liquid porcelain slip is poured into plaster molds and spun on a turntable to cast the body; once partially dry, each piece is taken out of the mold and finished by hand before it sets. The pieces are then dried slowly and biscuit-fired at around 800°C to strengthen the body and control shrinkage. After a dip in glaze, they go through a long reduction firing above 1300°C, where the glaze vitrifies and gives the porcelain its water resistance and sheen. Each stage calls for its own kiln temperature and timing, judged by eye and experience.

Reproducing the vintage form required a special double-layered porcelain structure, developed with Kikusho Tohki (菊祥陶器), one of Hasami's renowned kilns, over more than three years of trial and error. Between the hand-finishing and the kiln, every mug comes out with its own pattern — no two pieces are alike.

Made in Japan, and as suited to daily use as it is to a shelf in a collection.