Chigusa Kono is a glass artist who makes everyday vessels and artworks at her home and studio in Takasaki City, Gunma Prefecture. Ms. Kono uses burner work, a technique rarely seen in glassmaking, in her creative activities. Her thin, delicate glass vessels and motifs drawn on their surfaces using dots and lines are attracting attention as works of great originality.
Becoming an Independent Glass Artist
Chigusa Kono, a glass artist born and raised in Gunma Prefecture, now has a studio in Takasaki City. She says that she first became interested in glass because “I admired a glass artist in one of Takayoshi Honda’s short stories and wanted to become a glass artist.
Later, he had the opportunity to watch a TV special on glass making, which accelerated his interest in glass.
Since no one around him, including his family, was involved in art, let alone glass, and he did not know how to become a glass artist, he decided to enroll in Tama Art University, aiming for an art college where he could study glass art.
College years, when I learned the basics and began to see what I wanted to do.
While in school, Mr. Kono did not study under anyone, but learned glass from various people. The term “glass art” conjures up images of blown glass, such as air-blown and mold-blown glass, and cut glass, in which patterns are created by cutting the surface of glass with a grinder. However, Mr. Kono became interested in burner work, in which glass tubes are heated with an oxygen burner to create works of art, and he learned from various people and tried it out himself to find a way to do it.
At the time, there was no resident instructor teaching burner work at the university he attended, so he went to workshops outside of the university every time he had a break and continued to create his own works through trial and error based on what he learned there.
Three years of study at the Utatsuyama Craft Workshop in Kanazawa
In 2013, after completing the Master’s Program in Glass Crafts at Tama Art University, he resumed his creative activities, saying, “I want to get serious about making glass again,” despite having once been employed. At that time, he applied for and was successfully accepted as a technical trainee at the Utatsuyama Craft Workshop in Kanazawa, a comprehensive organization for the inheritance, development, and cultural promotion of excellent traditional crafts in Kanazawa, which has long been known as a city of crafts.
During my three years at the studio, I was given the opportunity to exhibit and sell my work while creating, which was truly a valuable experience,” says Kono.
His various experiences broadened his horizons, and with the addition of his experiences at the workshop to his previous creative activities, he gradually began to receive feedback for his works. By the end of his three years at the studio, he had decided on the direction he wanted to take and began his life as a glass artist.
Burner work difficulties
After repeated trial and error until he was able to establish his own style and give shape to his images, Kono developed a unique technique of making vessels using burner work, painting motifs centering on plants on the surface with glass to create his own unique world view.
Once the design is determined, I make the base of the vessel by machining a thin cylindrical glass tube so that I can hold it with both hands,” he says.
The process of making vessels by burner work begins with cutting a 150-cm glass tube to a convenient length, melting it over a fire, processing it, and preparing the glass as a material by himself.
Blown glass, which accounts for the majority of general glass vessel making, requires a melting furnace to melt the glass and a long blowpipe to breathe into to form the glass, which requires a considerable amount of space for production and often requires a large studio or dedicated factory.
However, Mr. Kono’s style, in which he processes glass using a hand-held burner, does not require a large workshop and can be completed entirely in a single room in his home.
3 pieces per day is the limit for creativity.
Kono’s works express the beauty of glass with their delicate thinness and creative designs. The secret to this delicate thinness is the use of heat-resistant glass. Because heat-resistant glass contains a higher percentage of silica sand than blown glass, it requires a higher temperature of about 2,000°C (2,000°F) than the 1,300°C (1,300°F) needed to melt ordinary blown glass. Even so, heat-resistant glass has little risk of breaking during the process, making it suitable for creating the thin, delicate vessels that characterize Kono’s work.
Breathing into the glass tubes he has prepared himself, he creates the base of the vessel according to the rough sketches he drew at the beginning of the process.
From the creation of the base vessel to the design of the surface, the work of constantly rotating the glass tube while heating it with a high-temperature burner is hard on the eyes and shoulders.
It takes less than two hours to make one glass, but it is extremely strenuous, so I limit myself to about three pieces a day.
In order to maintain quality, he says he can work more efficiently if he takes a good rest and does it the next day.
Glass world created by dots and lines
Once an imagined vessel is created, motifs are drawn on the surface with dots and lines of glass to express a unique view of the world. Many of the creative designs on the surface are plant-centered motifs, and some of them have been made into series.
I like plants,” he says. Insects and animals are good, but I often use plants as motifs, such as grass, trees, flowers, and seeds.
To draw a motif on the surface of a vessel with glass, he heats the vessel that will serve as the base, melts the tip of a decorative glass rod, and places it on the vessel so that the glass rod becomes a dot. Then, the decorative glass dots blend with the base vessel, and the glass is cut in the fire to confirm the fusion of the glass dots and the base vessel. This process is repeated, and when the motif has been painted with glass to a certain extent, the entire piece is heated with a burner, blown in, and the borders are blended before the painting is done again.
Similarly for the glass lines, a glass rod melted with a burner is placed on the warmed vessel, and the glass rod is placed on the vessel while pulling it as if to paint, and the borders are blended by blowing into it.
When the vessel is made according to the rough sketch and the surface design is finished, the glass tube on the mouth side is pulled and dropped in the fire until it tears off naturally, and then the mouth is widened and finished off in an orderly fashion.
Vessels for daily use and art works
Among glass artists, there are those who make utilitarian vessels and those who make works of art. While many people specialize in one or the other, Mr. Kono continues to create both.
There are those who pursue one or the other, but I find it more balanced for me if I do both. Making art works has a positive influence on the vessels, and making vessels for daily use has a positive influence on the art works, so I make my works without making too much distinction.”
He says that he sometimes receives requests from galleries and department stores to exhibit both vessels and artwork.
Ms. Kono says, “I am not bound to show my view of the world through art. Her flexible attitude toward glass also contributes to the appeal of her work.
You are free to use and perceive the vessel in any way you wish.
One of Mr. Kono’s works is a drinking vessel whose mouth is finished with glass dots. He says, “It started out as an impulse to make the mouth look straight by adding or subtracting glass dots to make the mouth look straight.
Surprisingly, people say that the dots are very pleasing to the palate, and it becomes a habit (laughs).
Many people are surprised at the gap between the treatment of the drinking spout, which matches Kono’s design of a massive European antique goblet, and the thin, delicate vessel. Furthermore, the heat-resistant glass makes it easy to use for hot beverages, making it useful as a daily-use vessel.
Recently, a sushi restaurant owner in Malaysia said he saw on social networking sites that a sushi chef in Malaysia was serving his sushi with soy sauce in Kono’s stemmed glass and a brush of soy sauce on the sushi he had just made.
He said, “It’s interesting to think that something born in this small workshop has traveled all the way to Malaysia to fulfill its role, as if something I made is traveling there.”
It is interesting to think that my work has traveled all over the world, and that the people who purchase it can use it in their daily lives. This is one of the ways that Kono hopes his works will be used in everyday life by the people who purchase them.
I want to place artwork in an architectural space.
Mr. Kono creates art works by applying sandblasting, gold, pearl, and platinum coloring. In the future, he would like to have more opportunities to have his artwork placed in some architectural spaces, such as the entrances to condominiums and hotels.
I am very happy to have private collectors buy my artwork, but I would like to have more opportunities to show it to many people in public spaces,” he says.
In the architectural spaces he is currently involved in, he creates small groups of artworks and combines them, considering the size and sparseness of the pieces, and then installs them while keeping an eye on the balance of the pieces.
Kono says that his desire to create this kind of work, and his hope that the people who receive his work will feel this way, has been gradually increasing in recent years.
At first, my goal was to be able to make a living just by making glass,” he says. From there, my life has gradually become more stable, and my goals are increasing with each new thing I am able to do.
As a young glass artist, Ms. Kono is now attracting attention at galleries and department store exhibitions and sales events. In his creative activities, he would like to continue to produce a good balance of everyday-use vessels and works of art. He also hopes to create works of art that will enrich the lives of those who receive them.
In the future, I would like to challenge myself to create new works while keeping my own world view in mind, so that my works can be seen in public spaces as well.
Using a unique technique called “burner work,” Kono’s thin, delicate vessels are decorated with decorative ornaments, giving her works a unique worldview and making them even more distinctive.
