Bizen Sake Cup

This is a Bizen sake cup by Toru Ichikawa, who studied under Ryuichi Kakurezaki and made a striking debut. While the avant-garde, highly creative design catches the eye, holding it in your hands reveals the immense passion he pours into expressing the beauty of clay as a material. Achieving these beautiful curves and edges requires a frightening amount of time and effort—a deep understanding of the nature of the clay—resulting in a piece born from tirelessly forging the earth, much like a master swordsmith. By utilizing the natural variations in the clay’s composition, he expresses not only the beauty of the curves but also the beauty of the surfaces themselves. Despite the incredibly elaborate form, the theme remains the beauty of the raw material itself, as if one had just dug into the earth with a shovel. Signed wooden box (shōsan-bako)
D 5.6cm × D 5.1cm × H 7.5cm Toru Ichikawa was born in Tokyo. He began studying under Ryuichi Kakurezaki in June 2011 and established his own studio in Tamano, Okayama Prefecture, in January 2015.