Panel Discussion

Gold Prize winners (two works)（1/2）

TAMAYA (MC)  ─────  Thank you. We will now move on to the two Gold Prize winners. Firstly, the winner in the Art Category – “Waver I” by Nagomi FUJITA. Mr Shinya YAMAMURA, please comment.

Shinya YAMAMURA  ─────  Of course. Is Ms FUJITA present at the venue? Congratulations! At the Final Assessment, almost all the jurors voted for this work so it easily came out on top. I would like to give an analysis of the work, but please correct me if I am wrong.

The base is glass made with a casting technique – pouring molten glass into a mold. I assume that she made the glass body herself? As for the urushi part, cloth or washi (Japanese paper) is used, so it is partly kanshitsu (dry lacquer).

Overall, the work is traditional with maki-e (metal powder) and raden (mother-of-pearl inlay) as the focus of attention, but the maki-e also includes kirigane (cut gold leaf), so a variety of techniques are used to decorate the surface of the glass. And there is the transparent lacquer. The glass is coated with a unique translucent amber lacquer. The techniques are sophisticated, and the work expresses the world of an underwater landscape, including features like seaweed.

Urushi and glass are very difficult materials to mix when applied in the normal way. Exposure to water will cause the lacquer to peel off the glass. Recently, good intermediate materials have appeared and the procedure of adhering urushi and glass has become a little easier. Some time ago in Kanazawa, Shogyo OBA, an urushi artist and living national treasure, created a work of urushi and glass. I think this is the first work since then to take up the challenge. In FUJITA’s case, she made the form herself, which is something new.

By means of the characteristic transparency of glass, you can see the underside of the mother-of-pearl and lacquer layer. This gives the work a sense of depth.

At the Final Assessment, we did see much larger works, and we did think that this work could have been larger than it is. But considering the precision of the technical skill, the Gold Prize had to go to this work.