The beautiful decorative sake cup is finely handcrafted by artist Annette Lindenberg using kurinuki, the traditional Japanese technique of carving from a single block of clay. The small cup is made of pale grey clay with a reactive glaze and a new variation of Lindenberg’s silver droplets glaze, creating a drip effect capturing movement and a temporal in-betweenness. The subtle blue-hued pale grey glaze is creatively varied with a matte finish in the interior and a glossier exterior surface. The hazy surface is disrupted by mossy green drips ending with silver droplets, in bursts of arbitrary energetic sparks, complemented by the textured clay body visible under the glaze. The complex texture juxtaposes with the simple, finely sculpted asymmetrical form of the cup — the rounded belly and narrower base resembles an endearing and graceful tulip shape, comfortably curving into the palm.
The piece elegantly treads a balance between delicate softness and jagged roughness, reflecting the artist’s interest in natural geomorphic forms and influence from the Japanese aesthetic theory of wabi-sabi – an appreciation for beauty in imperfection. This combination results in a mesmerising rawness and warmth that is simultaneously intimate and subliminal. The unglazed bottom exhibits the original rough clay body, finished with the neat maker’s mark, and the artist’s fingerprints can also be seen surrounding the green drip glaze.