Ishikawa Prefectural Museum of Art

This guide to the Ishikawa Prefectural Museum of Art in Kanazawa opens inside a Kyoto kiln in the 1650s, where a potter named Nonomura Ninsei is gambling with a nearly life-size clay pheasant whose long tail juts out unsupported, ready to collapse before the glaze even sets. It follows Ninsei as one of the first Japanese ceramicists bold enough to sign his own work, and his adoption of a newly imported Chinese overglaze technique that let him layer color after color through a second firing. The guide then turns to a quieter question: why this piece, unlike almost everything else the museum owns, never has to be locked away from the light. It traces the pheasants back to the Yamakawa family of Kanazawa, who once owned the pair.