Kiriko (Japanese cut glass)

Kiriko is hand-cut glass that was born in the late Edo period out of admiration for European cut glass. Learning from knowledge gained from Dutch books, makers improved and adapted techniques already used in Japan, and kiriko was produced in Kyoto and Osaka, in Edo, and in the Satsuma, Chōshū, and Saga domains. Edo kiriko is said to have begun in 1834, when Kagaya Kyūbei, a glass dealer in Ōdenmachō in Edo, carved patterns into the surface of glass with emery. Edo kiriko of the Edo period is said to have been made by hand, cutting clear lead glass with files, metal rods, and emery and polishing it with wooden sticks; many of its patterns, such as yarai (bamboo fence), chrysanthemum, and asanoha (hemp leaf), are also seen on kimono. Satsuma kiriko, by contrast, often used blanks with a thick layer of coloured glass over the surface (irokise) and was cut deeply and boldly with a wheel; because the coloured layer is thick, the cut faces show a gradation of colour. Satsuma kiriko's techniques died out in the early Meiji era, and its craftsmen moved to Tokyo and Osaka. From the Meiji era Edo kiriko also took up coloured overlay, and in 1881 the British cut-glass expert Emmanuel Hauptmann was invited to Japan, laying down the techniques that continue today. The Suntory Museum of Art holds more than forty pieces of Satsuma kiriko, centred on the former collection of the sculptor Asakura Fumio.

On a coloured piece, look closely at the edge of a cut: does the colour stop sharply, or fade gradually toward the clear glass?

Was this piece cut into clear glass, or into a layer of coloured glass laid over it?