Shinbutsu-shūgō, the old fusion of Shinto and Buddhism. Wayō-secchū, the blending of Japanese and Western forms. Japan has its own instinct, faced with two opposing elements: not to choose between them, but to hold both at once.

Working in interiors, we noticed we had been placing sharp-edged shelving against a bare, unfinished wall — pairing Modernism with wabi-sabi as a matter of course. And yet the two stand in complete opposition: the artificial and the natural, the smooth and the rough, the permanent and the seasonal. In our hands, somehow, this opposition sits together without friction.

For AMUAMI's Quartz series, we layered lacquer over glass. Glass carries Modernism; lacquer carries wabi-sabi — each a material symbolic of its side. The lacquer was sprayed on deliberately, finished cool and clean with no trace of a brush. What results is a vessel that is, through and through, modern.

But over ten years, fifty years, the lacquer's surface will slowly wear, and the color beneath will begin to show through. If it chips, kintsugi will mend it. The more it is used, the more wabi-sabi shows its face — a vessel wearing the skin of Modernism, quietly becoming an antique over time.