OKINAWA
Discovering Blue

“Indigo dyeing involves oxidation and reduction reactions, but you need yeast to help it along. Awamori feeds the yeast. If you control the environment and keep the dye nice and happy, the colour will be great. Indigo is an expensive way to dye. Making the most of it takes a lot of effort.”

Soaking cloth in the vat, so that the colour penetrates. At this point, the fabric is still yellow.

Fresh from the vat, the cloth is exposed to air and water, turning a refreshing shade of blue.

In the Okinawan language, the word for pottery is yachimun. Brought to popular attention in the 1920's with the Folk Craft Movement led by Soetsu Yanagi and Shoji Hamada, yachimun has become a household name, as one of the representative crafts of Okinawa. But what impelled Iki to devote himself to making yachimun was Okinawan pottery from an even earlier time.

“People have been making pottery on Okinawa since the fifteenth century, the days of the Ryukyu Kingdom. Whereas ceramics in Honshu were influenced by Northern China and the Korean Peninsula, Okinawa was overwhelmingly influenced by Southern China, Vietnam, Thailand and Southeast Asia as a whole. We’re part of Japan, but the fact that our ceramics came from other cultures sets us apart. This influence is clear in the karakusa curlicue designs, which are very close to patterns used in Vietnam.”

Originally from Kyoto, Iki entered the Okinawa Prefectural University of Arts in 1986, part of the first graduating class. His first year, however, turned out to be a disappointment.

“I wanted to escape from my hometown. A new art school was opening in Okinawa, so I came down and majored in crafts. My thinking was that design or painting was something that you studied in the city, whereas if you wanted to do crafts, you should head into the country. But when I actually got here, it was way different than expected. I felt a kinship with the old tombs and castles, but I had no idea where to begin engaging with the yachimun around me.”

The turning point came in his second year. As part of a course that he was taking with Jissei Omine, master potter and assistant professor, Oshiro had a chance encounter with a piece of treasure that the cultural museum in Shuri showed his class.

“It was a chilling snow-white makai*, made in the Ryukyu Kingdom period, early nineteenth century. When I saw it, I knew that I was in the right place. The thing that really got me was the karakusa patterns painted over the white glaze. This was no Japanese tea bowl. It felt like it held the breath of Asia. My graduation project was an attempt to reproduce this same white glaze.”
*In Okinawan dialect, a word for bowl.

Rooting his work in a sense of place, Iki began using Persian blue, influenced by his teacher.

Persian blue series. The contrasting colours are beautiful. A small plate starts at 2,750 yen.

A spirited work using a thick cobalt glaze. Not for sale.

Pelican Pitcher and glass. The pale ramune blue is pristine.

“This colour is actually just the colour of the glass scraps we recycle from construction sites. Our shop has been using recycled glass forever, since we opened in 1952. In the chaos of post-war Japan, resources were scarce, including scrap material, but we found our way by making work from melted-down juice bottles. Seeing this, the American soldiers took an interest. From there, we tried our hand at empty sake bottles, and since I signed on, twenty-five years ago, we’ve been using scrap glass from buildings. What hasn’t changed is that we stick with the colour of the base material, the way it is.”

To illustrate, he showed us a pair of cruets, one from today and one from twenty-five years ago, made from sake bottles. The difference is clear.

Glassware from twenty-five years ago (right) and today (left).

A fresh batch of construction scrap. This colour is the source of ramune blue.

“Back in the day, it was simply a matter of there being no materials. We had no choice but to use scrap, and we didn’t think of it as recycling. In retrospect, I’m really glad we did. This is a gentle, cooling colour. It’s absolutely fabulous. Compared to conventional raw glass, scrap takes more time and energy, since we have to wash it all and sort it into batches, but in our minds, Ryukyu glass is all about the recycled materials. It evidently cools down faster, too, but if you work with this in mind, it makes the job go swiftly.”

Uesato sets to work making a Pelican Pitcher. Dipping the blow rod in the crucible, he twirls on a helping of glass and blows. Thanks to his adroit craftsmanship, it has a spout and handle in the space of ten minutes.

Uesato, holding aloft a molten bulb. Using his breath and gravity, he changes the shape of the glass in the blink of an eye.

“This colour is actually just the colour of the glass scraps we recycle from construction sites. Our shop has been using recycled glass forever, since we opened in 1952. In the chaos of post-war Japan, resources were scarce, including scrap material, but we found our way by making work from melted-down juice bottles. Seeing this, the American soldiers took an interest. From there, we tried our hand at empty sake bottles, and since I signed on, twenty-five years ago, we’ve been using scrap glass from buildings. What hasn’t changed is that we stick with the colour of the base material, the way it is.”

To illustrate, he showed us a pair of cruets, one from today and one from twenty-five years ago, made from sake bottles. The difference is clear.

Glassware from twenty-five years ago (right) and today (left).

A fresh batch of construction scrap. This colour is the source of ramune blue.

“This pitcher was originally based on a similar item from an Italian glassworks. There used to be a person on Honshu who made them too, but not anymore. A while later, a client approached my teacher Masao Tobaru and asked for him to make one, and we’ve been making them ever since. It’s an incredibly difficult piece to make. Ten years passed before my teacher let me take the lead. If you’re behind on any of the steps, it falls apart.”

Letting the materials show their true colours gives this work a certain beauty, lasting from one era to the next. We can only hope that this tradition—not just the use of materials but the techniques used to make them shine—will survive well into the future.

In a moment of truth, the extruded lip of glass is skilfully worked into shape, breathing life into the spout.

Samples of past work, in a variety of shapes besides the Pelican.

UNIFORM BLUE jacket. The workwear styling fits right in at the studios of Okuhara Glass.

• Denim Work Jacket