A kiriko glass and its blue patterned shadow on stone. The light follows your cursor or finger.
A kiriko glass being cut, seen from inside: red guide lines, a fresh cloudy groove, and polished grooves.

Even itsshadowis cut.

Colored glass over clear, cut on a turning wheel. Wherever we cut, the color comes away, and sunlight lays the pattern on the table.

Cutting

  1. Marking

    Lines first,then the wheel.

    A few guide lines are drawn on the colored surface. Everything else is laid out by eye.

  2. Rough cut

    Glass againsta turning wheel.

    A diamond wheel cuts the groove under a trickle of water. A fresh cut is white and cloudy with fine scratches.

  3. Polish

    Polished,it turns clear.

    Finer wheels, then polishing, take the cloudiness away until the groove lets light through.

Move the cursor to move the sun.

Three kiriko glasses, ruri blue, beni red and kohaku amber, with their colored shadows. The chosen one is lit.

Choose it byits shadow.

The pattern is the same. The color of the light it throws is not.

The darkest blue. Inside its shadow, the cut lines stand out white.

80 mm across, 92 mm tall. Diamond and nanako cut.

Where two shadows cross, only light that passed through both glasses gets through, so the color turns deep and dark.

A long blue kiriko shadow on stone.

About SHOEI

SHOEI is an Edo kiriko workshop that designs the shadow along with the glass. Before a pattern is finished, we check how it falls on a table by a window.

This workshop, its glasses and its makers do not exist. SHOEI is a fictional brand created by Novaia Labs. Nothing here is for sale.

How Edo kiriko is made

  1. MarkingGuide lines are drawn
  2. Rough cutGrooves are roughed in
  3. Fine cutA finer wheel refines them
  4. SmoothingA stone wheel evens the surface
  5. PolishingThe cuts turn clear

Edo kiriko is said to have begun in 1834 with Kagaya Kyubei, a glass merchant in Edo. It became a Tokyo traditional craft in 1985 and a national traditional craft of Japan in 2002.

A kiriko shadow stretched long by low evening light.

Put it wherethe light falls.

On a windowsill, or the table at dinner time. A kiriko pattern is finished by the light that hits it.