Mino ware are the celebrated Japanese pottery of Gifu prefecture, and lately the traditional ceramics has seen a bit of a revitalization in creative modern products including expertly crafted reusable straws and sake carafes that sing like birds when you pour from them.

Mitani Toki is a Gifu-based company that uses traditional crafting techniques to produce high quality mino ware tableware. Their latest effort is for quite the hot dish, however, as the company has announced a successful crowdfunding campaign to release a mino ware cooking plate crafted from the recycled volcanic ash of the Sakurajima stratovolcano.

The "Volcanic Ash Plate HAI" is the brainchild of Mitani Toki and local efforts to more effectively use the volcanic ash left from eruptions of Sakurajima, which Mitani Toki estimates can exceed 1 million tons per year, in the form of a sustainable product using Mino ware crafting techniques.

The Volcanic Ash Plate is touted as being able to effectively cook and keep food hot even at low temperatures, thanks to an extremely high rate of far-infrared radiation that helps condense the flavor of the ingredients cooked.

The plate also produces very little smoke, and has excellent heat storage properties allowing it to distribute heat to the entire surface of the plate when even using "low" heat. This makes the Volcanic Ash Plate HAI an eco-friendly and no hassle grilling option for outdoor cooking.

The crowdfunding campaign is already well over its targeted support goal, but will run until the end of July. Those hopeful to get their hands on the volcanic ash cooking plate can follow the crowdfunding page as well as the Mitani Toki homepage.