Category: Ishida Tami

Transparent, Translucent, and Opaque: New Glasswork by Ishida Tami

Glass Ishida Tami

Glass by Ishida Tami in our shop ->

When I walk my dog before sunrise in San Diego’s Mission Bay, the sky along the Pacific coast sometimes displays spectacular bands of colors. When that happens, I take a picture and send it to the glass artist Ishida Tami because I think of her work.

Ishida Tami’s Glass Vessel, 2021
The sky before sunrise in Mission Bay, January 2021.

“The beauty of what nature creates is unrivaled and there is no way to even imitate it. But I want my work to stir the imagination in people,” Tami explained about what motivates her. Tami creates blown glass with layers of powdered glass coatings that are cut and intensely polished on the surface, a unique technique that she developed while studying the works of ancient Sasanian glassmakers.

Combining colors is the most difficult aspect in creating her work and Tami readily admits that she often makes mistakes. “Glass can be opaque, translucent, transparent, and the sizes of glass powder and their melting speeds and manufacturers can vary,” Tami said in summarizing the complex process and infinite combinations that are possible.

Tami used three different types of black glass in four different grain sizes to create work in the batch for Entoten

For example, Tami used three different types of black glass in four different grain sizes in the latest batch of work that she made for Entoten. “Black goes well with vivid colors so I used black many times in this batch of work,” she said. “I’m happy that delicate expressions of layers can be achieved with them.”

Tami has recently been finding inspirations for colors and layers of glass in natural stones, like agates with patterns on the cut surface. And while researching agates, she stumbled upon “The Writing of Stones,” a book by the late French intellectual Roger Caillois. “I thought that maybe we were inspired in a similar way by these rocks,” she said about the book. “But the vast imagination that Caillois derived from the interior of these stones was astonishing.”

A closer look of the foot of a glass vessel by Ishida Tami

Tami chuckled that she thought she was skilled at fantasizing until she read Caillois’ book and was amazed that he was far better at it.  “My thoughts as I create are evolving little by little, even if that isn’t apparent now. But I hope to create work that would reflect this progression in the future,” she said. The transformation is already visible in her current work that are distinctly her own.

 

The Genius of Unusual Methods: Glass Art by Ishida Tami

Glass Ishida Tami

Glass Vessels by Ishida Tami in our shop ->

When I saw Japanese glassmaker Ishida Tami’s work, I immediately thought of eggshells in a dazzling array of colors laid by exotic birds hidden deep in a forest that had yet to be discovered. Her gorgeous work invites self-reflection and quiet contemplation, like watching the sky gradually change its color in the early morning before sunrise.

Glass vessels by Japanese glassmaker Ishida Tami

“They are glass, but I want them to appear like ceramics, lacquerware, and even pebbles,” Tami explains.  “I am very particular about the texture and colors of the surface.” Tami enjoys creating work that fits in the palm of a hand and pays special attention to how the surface feels when they are touched.

Glassmaker Ishida Tami likes to make objects that fit in the palm of a hand and pays special attention to their touch

Initially, I thought Tami’s work looked like pate de verre, a type of glasswork that is made by filling powdered glass pastes into a mold. But her vessels carry a lightness that is not typical to pate de verre because they are actually blown glass with layer upon layer of powdered glass coatings that are cut and intensely polished on the surface. Her work is a mind-bogglingly time-consuming process, and I was curious to find out why Tami decided to create her work in this elaborate manner.

Ishida Tami blowing a gray color base vessel coated with ivory colored powdered glass.
Photo courtesy of Ishida Tami

Tami was born in Okayama prefecture, home to the famous local Bizen pottery that are usually unglazed and fired with wood. She studied ceramics in high school, but the austere Bizen pottery seemed dark to her young eyes, and she became more interested in glazed pottery. Later when she discovered that a new university, the Kurashiki University of Science and the Arts, was opening in 1995, she thought glass “seemed even more beautiful than glazed pottery.” So she decided to study glasswork.

The blobs of glass are cut after cooling and the bottoms are then polished into vessels.
Photo courtesy of Ishida Tami

But it was only after Tami started researching and creating replicas of ancient glasswork after graduation that she became fascinated by glass. Her graduate thesis was a work based on a historic Persian cut glass vessel in the collection of Okayama Orient Museum. She later enrolled in the Masters of Glass program at the University for the Creative Arts at Farnham in England and proceeded to extensively study Sasanian and Islamic glasswork. In 2013, Tami received the honor of being invited to create a replica of a Sasanian Cut Bowl for the British Museum.  In 2015, Tami won first prize in the prestigious Stanislav Libensky Award given out by the Czech Republic that provided her the opportunity to spend three weeks at the Pilchuck Glass School in Washington state.

“Ancient glassmakers created work through mysterious methods and techniques,” Tami pointed out. “And this is because they were still working their way to discovering more efficient ways to make things, but with limited tools and fuels.” It was the ingenuity of these long-gone glassmakers that Tami felt a deep love and attraction for and has become the driving force of her creations.

Glassworker Ishida Tami’s self-adapted coldworking tool.  She changes the wheel to cut and polish the vessels into the final form.
Photos courtesy of Ishida Tami

After Tami lost her teacher in a tragic accident three years ago, she has not been able to get back into her research of ancient glass and creating cut glass vessels. But through the study of Sasanian glasswork, Tami has accumulated extensive knowledge in cutting and polishing glass (click here to watch a YouTube video of former curator of Corning Museum of Glass, David Whitehouse describe a Sasanian cup with high quality glass cutting).  Through experimentation, she discovered that a distinctly beautiful texture and effect of graduating colors can be achieved by coldworking pieces that are blown and coated with powdered glass.

Tami admits that, “it is like taking the very long way home to create glasswork with the presumption that it will be coldworked to finish the form.” But this unusual method is the very reason why her work is so unique.

Glass vessels by Ishida Tami that resemble eggshells in a dazzling array of colors.

In a world where efficiency is prized, we sometimes forget that the process still makes the biggest difference to the end result. Tami’s work reminds us that the key for making objects that goes straight to the heart is not just about employing state-of-the-art equipment but is also about taking the time and trouble to convey the fascination for the material.