We created Blooming Sakura Petals to make our most popular product, Blooming Sakura, bloom even more. This fantastical piece is reminiscent of a blizzard of falling cherry blossoms.
The elongated facets on the sides bring the cherry blossoms into full bloom when you pour a drink into the glass.
Pouring a drink into this magical glass will reflect the engraved pattern on the bottom to create an enchanting cherry blossom scene—an effect unique to suna-kiriko glassware!
Made with a layer of kin-aka cranberry glass, flashed over a light blue base, the glass depicts cherry blossoms in full bloom. While flashed glass is often used in Edo kiriko, this product features custom-made flashed glass. The kin-aka or "gold ruby" colouring is perfect for someone celebrating their 60th birthday, an occasion when, in Japan, red gifts are welcomed for their symbolism of celebration and of a rebirth into the new chapter of life.
GLASS-LAB
https://glasslab.official.ec
Innovative, Kaleidoscopic Edo Kiriko
A guinomi (sake cup), its base engraved with a pattern of cherry blossoms, ten flat cuts on its sides. Filled with sake, the glass blooms with cherry blossoms as the pattern reflects up the sides, drawing you into a beautiful self-contained world of liquid light, rippled with the light blue of the cup’s base and vibrant kin’aka pink of the cherry blossom motif.
The Sakura Saku, or “blooming cherry blossom,” guinomi is one of many popular items from glass specialty store Shiina Kiriko (GLASS-LAB), established in 2014 by Shiina Takayuki. The family business, Shiina Glass, was founded by his grandfather in Kiyosumi Shirakawa in 1950 as a cut-glass processing factory. His father, second-generation Shiina Yasuo, is a master of hirakiri, or flat faceting, one of traditional techniques of Edo Kiriko. This method of creating flat facets in glass is more technically challenging than simply cutting lines in glass; currently, there are only about ten artisans practiced in the technique. Additionally, Takayuki’s brother, Shiina Yasuyuki, is a specialist in sandblasting. By spraying abrasive materials onto the glass surface, he is able to engrave intricate frosted-glass patterns such as cherry blossom motifs, and with extraordinary skill and dexterity draw ultra-fine lines as thin as 0.09 mm.
A workshop that combines these two techniques is extremely rare, and Shiina Kiriko (GLASS-LAB) was started with the desire to couple them to create unique Edo Kiriko. Suna Kiriko, which employs sandblasted engravings on the base and beautiful, reflective hirakiri faceting on the sides, was the innovative product of their joint efforts. When filled with liquid, the delicate sandblasted patterns spread through the glass and its contents in a kaleidoscope of light and color. Besides cherry blossoms, Shiina Kiriko (GLASS-LAB) also offers guinomi and old-fashioned glasses with motifs reflecting the changing seasons, such as fireworks, autumn leaves, and snowflakes. Glasses featuring motifs from famous ukiyo-e prints, such as Red Fuji and The Great Wave from Hokusai’s Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji series, have also found widespread popularity overseas.