display shelf USHIROSUGATA 180°

In my younger years, I bought a small ceramic bud vase in Kasama. It was meant as a birthday gift for someone, but I grew so fond of it that I decided to keep it for myself. Its willful, craggy form was so asymmetrical that I could not decide which side was the front, and for a long time I turned it round and round. I could not bring myself to give up any of its faces, until at last a good idea came to me: I placed two small mirrors, cut for me at a glass shop, behind it.

Whatever it may be, a beautiful form or a cherished memory deserves to be seen from every direction. On this shelf, I hope you will arrange whatever deserves to be called the jewels of your life. And if you have nothing in particular to place here, then perhaps it is enough to let it simply reflect you yourself, as the work.

Incidentally, since the true protagonist of this piece should be the collection you reflect upon this shelf, everything around it was made — quite literally — black, like a kuroko stagehand.