Indigo-blue saké ewer

In Japanese glass production in the Edo period, relatively thin-walled blown glass was termed “biidoro,” which is derived from “vidro,” the Portuguese word for glass. Beautiful examples of European glass reached Japan as gifts brought by the Spanish and Portuguese (the Namban or Southern Barbarians), who sought to spread both trade and Christianity. Fascination with those imported glass objects led to the launch of Japanese glass production in Nagasaki, apparently by the latter half of the seventeenth century. This ewer, or chirori, is a vessel of a type originally made of metal; chirori were filled with hot water and used in warming saké. Glass examples such as this one, with its cool, fresh look, may have been used to serve chilled saké.