Stamped Blossom Field
This Kyoto ware mug features the mishima technique, which involves stamping hundreds of small florets into dark clay and inlaying them with white slip so that the pattern can be felt as well as seen. Its black, unglazed body belongs to a lineage prized for "keshiki" — the landscape-like character a surface gains as it deepens with use.
Born of Kyoto’s Heritage: This piece too is authentic Kyo-yaki pottery, handcrafted using time-honored techniques and refined by centuries of Japanese artistry.
Learn more → The Art and Technique of Kyoto Ware
Sunlight at the Rim
A chip on the rim was repaired with urushi lacquer and finished with 24-karat gold. It was left with a soft matte finish in the taikiba polishing, allowing it to sit quietly against the dark clay. Directly behind it on the inner rim, lacquer artist Maki Mizuno painted a rising sun in urushi-e. The gold kintsugi reads as sunlight itself, cresting two blue waves. Twice awarded the highest honors at a Shiga art museum exhibition, Mizuno worked in the mitate tradition of seeing one thing as another for over four months using natural urushi.
A Sunrise Kept Private
The picture is not complete until it is used. When raised for a drink, the gold rim becomes the sun, and the painted waves receive it. It is a daybreak staged where this mug was once chipped. In the hands of its keeper, the vessel carries on two traditions: the Mishima inlay tradition of Kyoto ware, which was revived in this piece, and the urushi artistry of authentic kintsugi and urushi-e, which restored it. These two traditions are joined here and carried on together.
