Sake cup, named Ukamuse

An original Ukamuse cup, with a capacity about seven and a half times larger than a normal size wine cup, was kept in a famous Japanese restaurant ‘Ukamuse-tei’ in Osaka in the Genroku period (1688-1704). This renowned restaurant, where many celebrities visited, kept various unique wine cups. When a customer requested sake in large-sized Ukamuse cup, the owner himself appeared in hakama (traditional trousers) with a paulownia box. He took out the inner lacquer box from the paulownia outer box in a courteous manner. The inner box had maki-e design of a Japanese waka poem which contains the term ‘浮瀬 (Ukamuse)’. He then took out the huge Ukamuse cup made of an abalone shell from the inner box and offered a cup of sake to the customer. If the customer could drink it all, the name of the person would be listed in the restaurant’s record.

Since the Ukamuse cup was extremely famous at that time and a restaurant with the same name ‘Ukamuse’ was opened in Edo (modern Tokyo), many similar cups made of a normal-sized abalone shell were reproduced. The cup here in the collection of the Tachibana family is considered to be one of them.
Most of the cups have similar designs with rocks, waves and characters ‘浮瀬’; the rocks are depicted with taka maki-e (high-relief sprinkled metal), the waves are with hira maki-e (flat sprinkled metal), and natural holes of the shells are filled with rust lacquer.