New size announced! Winner of the Tokyo Governor's Award
This piece is the new size of the Janome Kiriko, which was awarded the highest prize, the Tokyo Governor's Award, at the 2023 Tokyo Teshigoto, a support project by the Tokyo Metropolitan Government to support traditional crafts. We created this mini-sized sake cup in response to customer requests.
Hira-kiriko is an Edo kiriko technique in which glass is placed against the side of a large disk blade and cut into a flat surface.
Sandblasting is a technique in which masking stickers are applied to the glass, and sand is blown onto the glass to etch out patterns.
A completely new style of Edo kiriko was born through the combination of these two techniques.
The sides of the flashed glass (two-layer glass consisting of a transparent glass covered with a lapis blue or red coloured glass) are cut flat on 16 sides and polished until transparent. The bottom of the sake cup is sandblasted with a janome (snake eye) ring pattern, a typical pattern of sake tasting cups. This Edo kiriko piece is specially designed for Japanese sake.
Pouring a drink will cause the 16 polished faces of the glass to reflect the ring pattern on the base like a kaleidoscope, giving it a new look every time you pick it up.
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.