Edo Kiriko 江戸切子

What is Edo Kiriko glass?

Edo Kiriko is glass cut by hand on a spinning wheel in Tokyo, and it has been called that since 1834. That year a glass dealer in Edo named Kagaya Kyubei started grinding patterns into glass surfaces with abrasive powder. The trade association still defines it with four plain conditions: it has to be glass, it has to be handmade, it has to be cut mainly with rotating tools, and it has to be made inside the designated area: Koto, Sumida, Edogawa and a handful of wards and towns around them. Tokyo listed it as a traditional craft on 15 July 1985. The national designation came on 30 January 2002.

The glass itself is either crystal glass or soda-lime glass. Most of what people picture as Edo Kiriko is iro-kise, colour-overlay: a thin skin of coloured glass over a clear body. When the wheel cuts through the colour, the clear glass underneath shows as a bright line, and that contrast is the whole effect. It was not always the look, though. Early Edo Kiriko was mostly clear glass with no colour at all, and the coloured overlay only became standard much later.

How can you tell it apart from Satsuma Kiriko?

Look at where a cut ends: Edo Kiriko's colour layer is a little under 1 mm thick so the cut finishes in a hard clean line, while Satsuma Kiriko's is 2-3 mm and the colour fades out into the clear. Tokyo's own crafts listing puts those two numbers side by side, which is the most useful single fact I know for telling them apart. The soft fade has a name in Kagoshima: bokashi. It is the point of the technique there, not a side effect.

The histories went different ways too. Satsuma Kiriko was a domain project in the last years of the Edo period, and it stopped roughly thirty years after it started, after the lord who backed it died. It was reproduced about a century later, from 1985, back at Iso in Kagoshima City where it began. Edo Kiriko never stopped. It stayed cheap enough to be an ordinary drinking glass for ordinary people, so the workshops kept working straight through.

What do the patterns mean?

Most Edo Kiriko patterns are older than the glass. They come off kimono cloth and basketwork as much as Buddhist decoration, and carry the meanings they had there.

麻の葉 asanoha is the hemp leaf, a hexagon broken into six points. It was on Buddhist robes in the Heian period, spread across Edo kimono, and went onto baby clothes because hemp grows quickly and sturdily and people wanted that for the child. 魚子 nanako means fish roe; the tiny facets throw light back in a run of little dots, like a line of eggs. 籠目 kagome is basket weave, a hexagonal lattice, long used to keep bad things out. 七宝 shippo takes its name from the seven treasures of Buddhist writing. 菊つなぎ kikutsunagi is chrysanthemums linked edge to edge, and 菊籠目 kikukagome sets the chrysanthemum into the basket lattice.

The association's list of traditional patterns runs to about fourteen: yarai, nanako, asanoha, shippo, six- and eight-sided kagome, kikutsunagi, kikukagome, kikka, sasa-no-ha, two kinds of spider web, kikko and hana-kiriko grape. Some names on our shelves are not on that list: 向日葵 sunflower, 大菊 large chrysanthemum, 縁繋ぎ, 波動, 蓮華 lotus, 竹の膳, 折鶴. Those are workshops' own design names for their own pieces, not old pattern words, and I think it is worth saying which is which rather than dressing every name up as a tradition.

How is a piece actually cut?

Six steps, and only the first one happens away from a wheel. The cutter starts with 割り出し, marking out divisions on the blank so the pattern will land evenly. Then 粗摺り, the rough cut, on a diamond wheel kept wet. Then 三番掛け, a finer wheel that takes the roughness out. Then 石掛け, a whetstone wheel that smooths the cut faces. Then 磨き, polishing. Then バフ掛け, a last buff on a cloth wheel with cerium powder to bring the clarity back. The national craft record notes something that still surprises people: an experienced cutter draws no picture on the glass first. The layout lines go on, and the rest is in the hands.

Why a cut glass costs what it costs

Nearly all of the price is one person's hours at a wheel, plus the risk that the last cut is the one that ruins it. There is no batch and no undo: glass only comes off. On a colour-overlay piece the working margin is under a millimetre: cut shallow and the line looks weak, cut deep in the wrong place and you are through the colour and the piece is finished. Add crystal blanks, which cost more than ordinary glass, and the years a cutter puts in before anyone hands them the fine patterns. That is the number.

How do you tell hand-cut from machine-pressed?

Run a fingernail across the pattern: hand cutting leaves a sharp groove with a slightly uneven feel, where pressed or acid-etched glass is rounded and perfectly regular. Hand work drifts. A repeat that runs around a glass will not close up exactly, and the spacing wanders a fraction across the piece. Facet junctions meet at a point rather than a soft corner. On a colour piece the cut edge reads as a hairline where the colour stops, not a fuzzy band. And a pressed glass has a mould seam on it somewhere; a cut one does not.

The first time I watched it done

The first time I watched a kiriko wheel work was in April 2022, at in , and what got me was how little of it looked like drawing. The cutter had the blank marked with a few faint lines and nothing else on it. He pushed the glass up under a wet diamond wheel, held it a second or two, turned it, did it again. He never stopped to check. Water ran off the wheel the whole time and the glass complained a little each time it touched.

I asked how long a piece takes. He shrugged. After twenty minutes of watching I stopped asking.

One thing about the photos on this page: they are mine, from a workshop visit in October 2022 (the camera dates say so). Whether that October day was the Edo Kiriko workshop or the Satsuma one I have not confirmed yet, so I am not going to put a place name on them. The April visit above is the one I am describing, and it was a different day.

How do you wash and store cut glass?

Hand-wash it in lukewarm water with a little neutral detergent, and keep it out of the dishwasher. Kagami's own guidance is blunt about why: detergent residue in a dishwasher leaves a white haze on the surface, and that haze cannot be taken off afterwards. Heat is the other one: their advice is that a temperature swing of more than about 30°C can break the glass, so no hot water into a cold glass. Dry it by hand. Store it standing up, not rim-down, and not touching the next glass. The care page has the rest.

Who cuts the Edo Kiriko we carry?

Eight houses at the moment. Kagami Crystal, founded 1934 by Kagami Kozo as Japan's first crystal glass works and now based at Ryugasaki in Ibaraki. Hirota Glass, started 1899 by Hirota Kinta, first factory 1915, still in Sumida. Yamada Glass in Sumida, whose founder Yamada Eitaro learned cutting from the British instructor brought over in 1881 to teach it. Then Nabetani, Nemoto, Toa Glass, Haku and Rinzen.

I buy from these houses in person on the trips. I have been in the Japanese-goods trade since 2013 and it still comes down to standing in a workshop and picking pieces up. We are in Glebe, Sydney. Browse the collection if you want to see what is on the shelves right now.