Kodai Ujiie: Red Lines Across a Yellow Sake Bottle

Kodai Ujiie’s sake bottle: a familiar outline transformed

A rounded body narrows into a short neck and an uneven, flaring mouth. The outline suggests a familiar sake bottle, but its surface changes the whole experience. Warm yellow-brown areas meet pale polygonal shapes, while bright red lines make a strong passage up the front. Our handling record identifies the work as 漆貫入彩黄瀬戸徳利, a sake bottle by Kodai Ujiie.

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The attraction begins with the relationship between a compact form and a restless surface. The body can be understood in one glance: broad through the middle, narrower at the base and neck. Within that clear outline, the small shapes are far less predictable. Some are rounded, others more angular; their sizes and spacing change continuously.

White islands and a red network

The red is especially effective where it surrounds the brightest white areas. It gives those pale shapes sharp boundaries and leads the eye from one to the next. Farther across the body, warmer tones take over and the contrasts become gentler. The result has several levels of intensity rather than one uniform decorative effect.

This is what makes close looking so rewarding. Follow the red passage upwards and it seems to branch and regroup. Move sideways into a quieter yellow area and the same network becomes finer. The surface can suggest scales, cells or fragments of a map, without requiring us to settle on a single image.

A mouth that belongs to the whole

The lip is small but expressive. Its irregular outline echoes the changing edges below, while the narrowing neck gives the eye a route out of the densely worked body. Near the base, smaller textures gather into another concentrated area. These changes in scale help the vessel feel connected from top to bottom.

Lacquer and ceramic in Ujiie’s wider practice

Ippodo Gallery describes Ujiie’s use of coloured lacquer with ceramic surfaces and relates it to his reinterpretation of kintsugi. In a 2023 interview, the artist also discussed inspiration from organic details such as skin, scales and cells. That general background opens another way into this bottle. Its visible strength is the way colour makes us notice boundaries, while the rounded form keeps those boundaries part of one object.

Look again: begin with the largest white area, then follow one red line towards the neck. Where does its surrounding colour change the way you see it?

A work we have handled, shown for reference.

Sources and further reading

• Kodai Ujiie — official artist profile

• Ippodo Gallery — Kodai Ujiie’s Contemporary Kintsugi

• Ippodo Gallery — Studio Visit: Kodai Ujiie, 2023