'kneading') is a Japanese pottery term describing the artistic technique where multiple colors of clay are marbled or combined to create various designs.
There was an explosion in popularity of the technique from about 1978–1995 in Japan, due probably to Aida Yusuke's advertising and to Matsui Kousei, who refers to his work as neriage.
Yusuke Aida was on a television commercial for Nescafé and it seems to have entered the vocabulary at about that time when his nerikomi coffee cups were available to the first people contacting the advertisers.
[4][5] In nerikomi, a design is created in such a way that it extends through a long block of clay, akin to the murrine canes of millefiori glasswork.
By slicing thin slabs of the block, the design can be repeated, to either be reassembled in repetition or applied to a larger piece.