Thousands of Miniature Vases in a Rainbow of Glazes

by Ceramic Artist Yuta Segawa

thisiscolossal.com/2019/07/yuta-segawa

July 22, 2019

July 22, 2019

Laura Staugaitis

Japanese ceramicist Yuta Segawa plays with scale and color in his multitudes of miniature
vessels. Each hand-thrown pot and vase is crafted with the same attention to structure and
detail that a full-sized piece would have, from the tidy foot to the gracefully shaped neck.
Segawa also formulates his own glazes, with five hundred under his belt so far.

To accentuate the small size and complementary colors of his ceramics, Segawa often
displays the vessels in long, neat rows, or arranges them in a scattered formation that shifts
between warm and cool tones. Segawa describes the intention behind his work in a
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statement on his SGW Studio website: “Miniature pottery relates to the issue of the
relationship between artists’ bodies and their works. It is a challenge to test the limits of
what a human body can make on such a small scale.”

In addition to his pint-sized pottery, the London-based artist also experiments with using
his feet and tongue in place of his hands to shape pots, a technique he refers to as “body
throwing“, and glazes mountainous piles of collapsed vessels that send up the notion of
ceramics as functional vessels. Pick up a tiny pot of your own in Segawa’s online store, and
watch the making-of in the video below. Segawa also shares updates on in-progess and
completed pieces on Instagram. If you enjoy Segawa’s work, also check out Jon Almeda.

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