Thousands of Miniature Vases in a Rainbow of Glazes by Ceramic Artist Yuta Segawa

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 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.