24K Gold Kintsugi Ko-Imari Sake Cup | A Chorus of Arches

Fluted Columns from Arita Ko-Imari porcelain comes from Arita, Japan's first center of porcelain production, and is known for its hand-painted cobalt-blue sometsuke designs. Cups of this kind are generally associated with the late Edo and Meiji periods, when Arita kilns produced everyday vessels for Japanese homes. This cup has a fluted body and scalloped rim, with alternating blue columns and white spaces filled with lattice patterns, sprigs, and rings. The freehand decoration gives each column a slightly different character. Hata's Line in 24K Gold Keiko Hata, a lacquer artist who holds a Master's degree in Lacquer Arts from Kyoto City University of Arts and has taught traditional kintsugi workshops in Japan, spent four months restoring this broken cup. She rejoined the fragments, rebuilt the damaged areas, and polished successive layers of natural urushi until level. Next, she sprinkled 24K marufun (spherical gold powder) over the restored areas in the maki-e manner and sealed it under a thin coat of raw urushi, curing both into one durable layer. Roiro, the final finish, is hand-polishing of exceptional refinement, and it is what gives the gold its rich, deep luster. Food-safe, the cup remains suitable for sake. Columns to Count Turned slowly, the cup shows its blue columns one by one, each carrying a different hand-drawn lattice, sprig or ring motif, and the fluted body and scalloped rim rise and fall with their rhythm. The gold branches across the columns and meets above the arches at the base, as though the painter had reserved the spot for it. Such cups were once everyday ware in Japanese homes; food-safe, this one can be used for sake or stand as a small work of urushi art. Either way it carries forward what Hata put into it over four months, and the long ordinary history of the cup itself.