Crossword-Solution: CERAMISTS 9 letters, 3 clues 🏆 scrabble score: 13

Our pottery would probably never have attained its high quality of excellence if the tea-masters had not lent it to their inspiration, the manufacture of the utensils used in the tea-ceremony calling forth the utmost expenditure of ingenuity on the parts of our ceramists.

Ceramists had previously come from Kudara (Paikche), and there can be no doubt that some progress was made in the art from the fifth century onwards.

The former innovation is ascribed--as already noted--to Kato Shirozaemon, a native of Owari, who visited China in 1223 and studied under the Sung ceramists; the latter, to Shonzui, who also repaired to China in 1510, and, on his return, set up a kiln at Arita, in Hizen, where he produced a small quantity of porcelain, using materials obtained from China, as the existence of Japanese supplies was not yet known.

Here in this splendid abode were poets and painters, musicians, sculptors and architects, dancers, weavers of fabrics, ceramists, jewellers, engravers, enamellers, artists in lacquer, carvers, designers and workers in glass and metal, pearl and ivory and the precious stones.

The success of the German ceramists led to a wide patronage of potters by kings and princes which quickly spread the knowledge of porcelain throughout Europe.