Masterscraft Ceramic Chopstick Rests
November 6, 2026 – Sachi Uchimaru
Chopstick rests (hashi-oki) are normally unassuming and plain, there to serve a quiet but important job of keeping both the chopstick tips and the table clean during a meal. When we first saw the chopstick rests made by Goshima-sama and his team, however, any preconceived notions we had about chopstick rests being a side character were blown far away. With their whimsical designs, you can add fun, joy, and creativity to your table setting.
Goshima-sama’s company was established by his parents in 1960, in Gifu Prefecture. They were originally a wholesale company selling ceramic tableware of Mino-yaki, a style of ceramics local to the Tono Region of Gifu with a long history dating back 1,300 years. In 2006 they decided to open a kiln themselves. Now they create more than 600 designs of chopstick rests, all using different variations of the 40 clays and 100 glazes they have at hand.
Why Chopstick Rests?
The company’s story on how they began making chopstick rests unfolded over time and is full of serendipity. When they were still a wholesaler, Goshima-sama came across a beautiful lotus-shaped chopstick rest made by a young designer working at one of their vendors. He successfully negotiated to be the exclusive distributor of this lotus-shaped design, and eventually added 6 or 7 more designs in collaboration with this designer.
One day a magazine reached out to Goshima-sama asking if they could include their chopstick rest as a promotional item. Soon after the article was published, a young designer about to graduate from an art school in Tokyo reached out, asking to work for him—she’d been moved by the chopstick rest she saw in the magazine. As they were still a small family-run company with only a handful of part-time employees, he felt he had no choice but to turn her down. She returned a short time later to ask again, and moved by her passion Goshima-sama asked for one year of lead time to bring her onboard. She returned a year later, and they created many beautiful designs together.
Unfortunately a few years later her life circumstances took her away from Gifu, which forced her to leave the company. But as her circumstances shifted again later, she was able to return to create more beautiful products along with Goshima-sama. Looking back, Goshima-sama reflects that a single chopstick rest—whether the lotus design he first saw all those years ago, or the one she encountered in the magazine—had the power to move people so deeply that it changed the course of their lives.
Manufacturing with Sustainability Top of Mind
Their company motto is, “creating the biggest emotional impact with the smallest resources.” They deeply believe in sustainability, and have pursued various ways to achieve this. While Mino-yaki ceramics are usually fired in large gas-powered kilns, Goshima-sama is able to use smaller kilns as chopstick rests are so small. They also installed solar panels in 2013 as part of their efforts toward sustainability.
They focus on “heart and hands,” as they believe that handmade things created with passion are able to bring joy to people’s hearts—and therefore do as much without the aid of machines as possible. They joke that this is in the opposite trajectory to what everyone else is doing by increasing efficiency through automation and AI. When designing a product, he thinks of “what will make my heart sing,” not “what will sell.”
Their location in the Tono Region of Gifu Prefecture has a critical impact on their production, as it is the birthplace of Mino-yaki. Goshima-sama shares that it would be difficult to find an area in the world that is as comprehensive a ceramics production region as Tono. Unlike other famous ceramic areas which usually only work with porcelain, Mino-yaki includes both pottery and porcelain–including white porcelain as well as sometsuke featuring white porcelain with cobalt blue painted decorations. Due to the long history of ceramic making in the region, there is an abundance of specialized companies in one area–those that make clay, glazes, or molds, slip-casting workshops, painting and decoration studios, raw material manufacturers, kilns, and wholesalers. Because of this, no single kiln needs to do everything itself—ideas like “this clay, this glaze, this shape, this decoration, this firing method” can be readily realized by combining different companies’ specialized skills.
That being said, Goshima-sama’s company does almost everything in-house, from selection of raw materials, production, quality control and shipping.
While small, chopstick rests can have a large impact on the mood of the dining table. They can spark a conversation before the meal even begins, or bring a smile to your face. We hope you can incorporate these small bits of joy into your lives.
