Skip to main content
Entoten
FacebookInstagramPinterestYouTube

Menu

Skip to content
  • Blog
  • Shop
  • Artists
  • Places
  • Press
Sign In Search

Recent Posts

  • POP UP CRAFT SHOW at the Den on Laurel Street Dec. 3rd & 4th November 23, 2022
  • Frost Falls Approximately October 23th – November 6th October 23, 2022
  • Harmony with Food: Ceramics by Kojima Yosuke in Iga October 18, 2022
  • Cold Dew
    Approximately October 8th – 22nd
    October 8, 2022
  • Autumn Equinox
    Approximately September 23rd – October 7th
    September 21, 2022
January 2023
M T W T F S S
 1
2345678
9101112131415
16171819202122
23242526272829
3031  
« Nov    

Top Posts & Pages

  • The Flavor of the Earth: The Rustic Ceramics of Shigaraki
    The Flavor of the Earth: The Rustic Ceramics of Shigaraki
  • A Tour of the Pottery Towns of Southern Japan: Part I: Karatsu
    A Tour of the Pottery Towns of Southern Japan: Part I: Karatsu
  • Wood Firing in ‘Flow State’: New Ceramics by Shumpei Yamaki
    Wood Firing in ‘Flow State’: New Ceramics by Shumpei Yamaki
  • The Fabrics of a Craft: Quiltmaker Sarah Nishiura
    The Fabrics of a Craft: Quiltmaker Sarah Nishiura
  • Guide to Choosing Your Tea Whisk for Matcha
    Guide to Choosing Your Tea Whisk for Matcha

Categories

  • 72 Seasons Essays
  • Events, Workshops and Webinars
  • People
    • Naru (Inoue Naruhito)
    • Kojima Yosuke
    • Ayumi Horie
    • Bill Geisinger
    • Chieko (Calligraphy)
    • Floresta Fabrica
    • Hanako Nakazato
    • Harada Fumiko
    • Hashizume Reiko
    • Hashizume Yasuo
    • Horihata Ran
    • Hoshino Gen
    • Ikushima Harumi
    • Inoue Shigeru
    • Ishida Tami
    • Jarrod Dahl
    • Kazu Oba
    • Kenneth Pincus
    • Kikuchi Yuka
    • Kitamura Tokusai
    • Kobayashi Katsuhisa
    • Kubota Kenji
    • Kuriya Masakatsu
    • Maeda Mitsuru
    • Marshall Scheetz
    • Mike Martino
    • Mitch Iburg
    • Muranaka Yasuhiko
    • Nakaya Yoshitaka
    • Nitta Yoshiko
    • Ontayaki
    • Sakai Mika
    • Samuel Johnson
    • Sarah Nishiura
    • Saratetsu
    • Sasaki Shoko
    • Shumpei Yamaki
    • Style Of Japan
    • Takahashi Nami
    • Takami Yasuhiro
    • Tanimura Tango
    • Watanabe Ai
    • Yamada Yutaro
    • Yamauchi Takeshi
    • Yokotsuka Yutaka
  • Baskets
  • Ceramics
  • Design
  • Glass
  • Kintsugi
  • Metal
  • Textiles
  • Urushi
  • Wood
  • Mingei
  • Research
  • Food and Craft
  • Topics
  • Tea (Chado)
  • Travels
    • Arita
    • Bizen
    • Hagi
    • Karatsu
    • Kuroe
    • Kyoto
    • Matsumoto
    • Mino / Tajimi
    • Onta
    • Shigaraki
    • Shizuoka
    • Sonoma County
    • Tokoname
    • Vietnam

Tag: glass art

Revitalizing Taketa with Craftsmanship: Glassblower Naru

By:
Ai Kanazawa
August 15, 2022Naru (Inoue Naruhito) Events, Workshops and Webinars Glass

Glasswork by Naru in our shop ->

GLASS SHOW with Naru <Inoue Naruhito>
September 3 & 4, 2022
11 am – 5 pm
At The Den on Laurel Street
205 Laurel Street, #104
San Diego CA 92101

For more than two decades, Japanese glassblower Inoue Naruhito, known as Naru, has been fascinated by glass, the raw material of his work. “When I create work, I pay special attention to how light occurs in the work I make,” he says. “I think about how my work refracts and reflects light, and the unique lens effects.”

Large KAGUYA vase by Naru. Its appearance changes subtly with light
KAGUYA Lidded jar by Naru
KAGUYA teabowl by Naru
KAGUYA pourer and glasses by Naru.
In his smaller utilitarian work, Naru seeks pleasant plumpness of the glass surface

Naru’s work is sinuous and colorful, carrying unique meditative qualities, like an enchanting sea jelly bursting with life. “I want to make work that seems to have sprung out of the earth, or suggest a ripening fruit,” he explains. “Even though they’re manmade, I want to evoke the notion of natural objects that has existed on earth from the ancient past.”

Naru first became interested in glass while traveling alone in Morocco over 20 years ago. Seeing that he had brought a camera, a local friend asked him to document the “Festival of Sacrifice.” “When they brought out a sheep, I assumed that they were going to shear it,” he said. “I was so startled when they started slaughtering it. I wanted to cover my eyes, but somehow, I could maintain my calm through my camera lens.”  It was this emboldening effect of seeing the world through glass that stuck with him.

After returning to Japan, Naru visited a local glass studio to learn more about glass. He also discovered that his name “Naru” means “fire” in Arabic. “I felt a sense of destiny because the shape of the glass is changed by melting it with fire,” he says. Eventually Naru signed up for his first glassblowing class at Pilchuck Glass School in Seattle, Washington. “I boldly signed up for their summer session with almost no experience,” he says. But this fearless act allowed him to build friendships with fellow artists at Pilchuck and drove him to seriously pursue the craft.

In 2002, Naru joined the Toyama Institute of Glass Art. After graduating from the institute, he continued to hone his skills by working for various glass artists until 2011.

Nature is the source of inspiration for Naru, and he is immersed in it in Taketa, where he set up his glass studio in 2015. A small country town of less than 20,000 people in Oita prefecture in Kyushu, Taketa is an ancient castle town famous for its soda hot springs and magnificent panoramic plateau on sediment from the Mount Aso volcano.

Magma Glass, a studio founded and operated by Naru in Kuju plateau, Taketa, Oita
Photo courtesy of Naru
The surrounding Kuju Plateau, Taketa, Oita
Photo courtesy of Naru
Central Taketa Town, Oita
Photo courtesy of Naru

Like other small Japanese towns in the countryside, Taketa’s population is aging and shrinking. But what is special about this town is its unique program to promote settlement by young and motivated craft artisans through subsidies. “In 2012, I built my own studio in Yokohama, my hometown, but Taketa invited me, so I decided to move here with my family three years later,” Naru said.

Taketa attracted enough artisans over the years to be known as a town of crafts and beautiful nature among Japanese tourists. Naru’s well-established glass studio –called Magma Glass, in homage to the adjacent Mount Aso— is a great success story providing local employment and attracting craft tourism.

“After I arrived here, I wanted to create work using local materials,” Naru explains. “And because it is Taketa, I wanted to use bamboo.” “Taketa” literally means “bamboo fields.”

Through trial and error, Naru devised a method to cure bamboo to use as molds for glassblowing. Now, his main line of work is made using these bound bamboo molds that create beautiful soft curved lines. He named the series “Kaguya”, after the bamboo princess Kaguya, who was born from a segment of bamboo in the old Japanese folklore, “The Tale of The Bamboo Cutter” (竹取物語).

WATCH VIDEO FOOTAGE OF GLASS ARTIST NARU BY JETRO

Cured bamboo glass molds
Photo courtesy of Naru
KAGUYA wind bell by Naru. These bells have bamboo clappers that create soothing sounds. There will be over 30 of these bells shown in San Diego in September 2022
Naru working at his studio at Magma Glass
Photo courtesy of Naru

The other line of work that Naru passionately pursues include lamps and candle holders that he began making after the destructive earthquake in Japan in 2011. “Soon after the earthquake, there were widespread power outages and electricity conservation requests,” he recalls. He also added that since the pandemic, there has been renewed interest in lanterns in Japan. He says that it is probably because more people spent time outdoors or went camping, and they needed a reliable light source without electricity. “I thought that maybe it is also because fire is a source of comfort during this time of crisis.”

Blownglass candle stand by Naru

For the Labor Day weekend pop-up at the Den on Laurel Street, Naru will bring over 130 pieces of his work from Japan that will be shown in the U.S. for the first time. He will be at the Den throughout the two-day event. Join us to meet this prolific artist, who is also playing a big part in revitalizing a beautiful town in Kyushu through creativity.

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

By:
Ai Kanazawa
August 2, 2021Glass 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.

 

Building a Japanese Glassware Tradition: Blown Glass by Floresta Fabrica

By:
Ai Kanazawa
February 17, 2020Floresta Fabrica Glass Shizuoka

Blown glasswork by Floresta Fabrica in our shop  ->

When people think of crafts from Japan, glassware is probably not the first thing that comes to mind. But even though the craft has a relatively short history in Japan, I personally think Japan boasts many glass makers who create exceptional work, both sculpturally and functionally.

 

Blown glass pitchers by Suzuki Ai: The spouts are perfectly executed so they do not drip. The downward spout make these lovely pitchers resemble little birds
Glass tea caddy by Suzuki Tsutomu. The stunning blue-green color is added by films of silver and copper on the outside. Tsutomu carried out countless experiments to achieve this effect.

An emerging example of this Japanese glasswork excellence is Floresta Fabrica, a studio of husband and wife glass blowing duo of Suzuki Tsutomu and Ai, based in Mori town of Hamamatsu city in Shizuoka Prefecture. ‘Floresta Fabrica’ is Portuguese for ‘forest factory,’ because Tsutomu and Ai wanted to honor the Portuguese who brought glass blowing techniques to Japan in the 18th century. ‘Forest’ refers to their hometown of ‘Mori’, which means ‘forest’ in Japanese. They established their gallery and residence inside an old Japanese house in 2016.

Suzuki Tsutomu and Ai
Suzuki Tsutomu and Ai’s residence and gallery in Mori town
The view from the gallery of Floresta Fabrica

Tsutomu and Ai’s hand-formed glass vessels have very pleasing and slightly nostalgic forms and textures. “We thoroughly study the forms so that they are pleasing to look at and are comfortable to use” Ai explained. “We try to have the perspective of the user when we design the vessels.”

Glass goblet by Suzuki Ai has a lovely form and slightly nostalgic appeal

They are particular about forming each piece by only using hand tools because they believe that is the best way to convey the beauty of mouth-blown glass. For textured pieces, the mold is only used in the beginning to add the texture but shaping is done with hand tools. Ai said that mastering the use of tools is the most difficult process of glass blowing, and that she sometimes just wants to use her hands, but laughed that “would not end well.”

Some of the hand tools used by Suzuki Tsutomu and Ai
Suzuki Tsutomu creating the foot of a sake cup

The batch, which refers to the raw material for the glass, is also very carefully selected for the transparency of the glasses. “We use batches from Sweden because they are very transparent, and we melt the materials carefully so that very few impurities get mixed up.” Any impurities will affect the clarity of the glass.

A pelletized batch from Sweden used by Floresta Fabrica. The material is lead-free and melted to create clear glass.

Ai studied glass blowing at the Osaka University of Arts. She was among the first generation of students that studied in the newly established department. “It was a very good environment because they had the newest and top of the line equipment,” she recalls. Tsutomu was born into a family of ceramicists in Mori, which is well-known for its Moriyama ware. He learned glass-blowing at the Tokyo Glass-Art Institute, and worked several years in Tokyo. The couple decided to settle in Mori after they got married because they believed it was the ideal location for their studio.

Tsutomu and Ai recently became parents to a baby boy and are very happy to be able to raise him in the beautiful natural environment surrounding their house. “This location works well because people come to town to see the ceramics and they also stop by to see our glass work,” Tsutomu said. They dream that Mori will be known one day for both ceramics and glasswork.

 

The beautiful natural environment of Mori town

And history is on their side. Moriyama ware has a history of about 100 years, a relatively short timespan for ceramics in Japan. Moriyama was started by Nakamura Hidekichi, a local man who was so impressed by the story of Seto’s potter Kato Kagemasa that he invited a Shitoro-ware potter to establish a kiln in Mori. These days Mori is a well-established pottery town that is home to four families of potters.

  • Terms & Conditions
  • Privacy & Security
  • Contact Us
  • ✉️ Newsletter Archive
  • About
  • えんとてんJapan

Subscribe To Our Newsletter

Our Mailing Address is

Entoten LLC
c/o The Den on Laurel St.
205 Laurel St. Suite 104
San Diego CA 92101

E-mail: hello@entoten.com

Copyright © 2022 ENTOTEN LLC

Studio Kotokoto is now closed. Thank you for your support over the years!
You have been redirected to Entoten, an online blog and shop that was created by one of Studio Kotokoto’s founders.