Toa Glass 東亜硝子工芸

Who is Toa Glass?

Toa Glass Kougei, in Japanese Toa Garasu Kougei, is an Edo Kiriko workshop in Ota Ward, Tokyo, at Shinkamata, a few kilometres from the Koto Ward streets where most Edo Kiriko workshops cluster. Its own company profile lists glass polishing, Edo Kiriko among other work, as its business; its capital is ten million yen and it belongs to the Edo Kiriko Cooperative Association. The representative is Nabetani Satoshi, a craftsman designated by Japan's Minister of Economy, Trade and Industry as a traditional craftsman of Edo Kiriko.

What is Nabetani Satoshi's background?

His own workshop bio sets out a career built inside the craft rather than arriving at it from outside. In 1993 he apprenticed under his father Kaoru, a Tokyo Meister and one of Ota Ward's hundred master craftsmen. In 1994 he joined Kagami Crystal, a long-established glassware maker, and in 1996 he joined Toa Glass Kougei itself, working up to representative from there. He was certified a METI traditional craftsman in 2010 and recognised the following two years as one of Ota Ward's outstanding manufacturing craftsmen. He currently sits as a director of the Edo Kiriko Cooperative Association, and his award record runs from a Tokyo Labour and Economic Bureau prize at the 2005 Edo Kiriko New Works Exhibition through a Cooperative Chairman's Award at the 25th exhibition in 2013 and a Kanto Traditional Craftsmen's Association prize in 2019.

What makes Toa Glass's cutting distinctive?

Edo Kiriko as a technique is covered in full on our Edo Kiriko hub: a thin coloured skin over clear glass, cut back on spinning wheels so the pattern reads as bright lines through the colour. A visiting report from the craft body Aoyama Square adds detail specific to workshops like this one: the coloured layer runs about a millimetre or less, thinner than Kagoshima's Satsuma kiriko, and a single piece can call on more than ten different diamond wheels, the large discs bought ready-made and the small ones ground down by hand into custom shapes. A smoothly cut line reads as sparkle; a duller cut reads as transparency, and Nabetani Satoshi leans toward the second, carving large clear sections back so light passes through rather than stopping at a painted-on pattern.

What does Toa Glass sell today?

Our own listings note that Toa Glass began as a factory cutting whisky bottles before it turned to Edo Kiriko, and that history still shows in Nabetani Satoshi's preference for clear glass carved back over pattern packed edge to edge. What we carry are whisky glasses cut with named patterns: Bud, tsubomi, keeps most of the glass clear around a run of vertical facets and one deep cut at the base. Sunflower, himawari, sets a fish-roe cut at the base that reads from above as a flower centre with petals opening around it. Lotus, renge, lays the cut out in a flower's layered symmetry rather than a picture. Sound of Waves in blue and red, haine, pairs an asanoha hemp-leaf cut on the upper half with a curve below meant to suggest a wave's motion.

How do you look after it?

Our own listings give one consistent care note across the range: wash by hand in warm water with a soft sponge, never a scourer, and rinse twice so no soap film dulls the cut. Keep it out of the dishwasher and away from sudden changes in temperature, the kind of shock that can crack any cut glass. Our cut-glass care guide covers the same ground in more depth if you are storing several pieces together.