There are as many shapes of vessel as there are artists. Kasama in Ibaraki is one of the Kanto region's leading pottery towns, and during Golden Week it holds the Himatsuri pottery festival. More than two hundred exhibit: kilns, ceramic artists, individual makers. The mark of Kasama ware is that it has no fixed mark; there is no rule that it must be a certain way, so each artist creates freely. Plain folk craft and avant-garde forms stand side by side in the same market. Makers mind their own tents, and when a customer picks up a piece and says, this is lovely, the artist nods, pleased. Between buyer and maker, there is no distance here. The festival began in 1982, started by the potters themselves. Because there are no rules, there is freedom; its diversity is the market's richness. One of Ibaraki's defining pottery markets.