Redesign of Kurojyoka Drinkware by Yuki Ijichi is a highly esteemed winner of the very prestigious 2025 Golden A' Design Award in Bakeware, Tableware, Drinkware and Cookware Design Competition Category.
GoldKitchenware· 2025
Redesign of Kurojyoka Drinkware
by Yuki Ijichi
Client: MATHERuBA
Golden A' Design Award Winner in Kitchenware Category
Verified Award Winner
Verify Award Status for #164307The Design
About Redesign of Kurojyoka Drinkware
This is a redesign of the kurojyoka, a traditional Kagoshima shochu ceramic teapot, to fit modern lifestyles. The traditional Kurojyoka was formed based on the Japanese hearth heating system, and its shape has remained the same despite changing lifestyles. This project is a continuation of Kagoshima's shochu culture and traditional craftsmanship by modifying this aspect and updating the kurojyoka to fit modern lifestyles.
The Recognition
About the Golden A' Design Award
Redesign of Kurojyoka Drinkware is a Golden A' Design Award winner, an immensely prestigious recognition granted to first-rate, marvelous, and outstanding designs. Golden winners are exceedingly innovative, visionary, and glamorously dazzling creations that reflect the prodigy, wisdom, and prowess of their designers. Redesign of Kurojyoka Drinkware is expected to be a highly praised, trendsetting, and monumental invention that delivers unprecedented value. This Golden A' Design Award-winning design is a spectacular, respected project that highly benefits and advances the boundaries of art, science, design, and technology. Redesign of Kurojyoka Drinkware creates intense feelings of desire, evokes passion, encourages creativity, and fascinates us.
Where to Get It
Strategic Design Solutions Across Multiple Disciplines
We transform ideas into meaningful designs that bridge tradition and modernity. Our studio specializes in product design, branding, space design, and web solutions, creating sustainable value through deep cultural understanding and innovative thinking.
Discuss Your ProjectInterviews
Design Interview
What is the main principle, idea and inspiration behind your design?
Reinterpreting Kagoshima's traditional sake vessel, the “kurojoka,” to suit modern lifestyles, making shochu culture enjoyable in everyday life. The fusion of tradition and modernity is the central theme.
What has been your main focus in designing this work? Especially what did you want to achieve?
We naturally updated the functional form of the “kurojoka,” born from the lifestyle of its time, into a shape that fits contemporary living. We aimed to redefine the “Kurojoka” for today's era by re-examining forms and functions that had been preserved solely for their traditional status but no longer fit contemporary living.
What are your future plans for this award winning design?
We position the “Kurojoka” not merely as a product, but as a modern shochu culture originating from Kagoshima to be shared globally. We envision its use as gifts and its adoption in restaurants and bars.
Behind the Design
Press Kit
Credits, team members and technical details provided by the designer.
- Unique Properties
- This is a redesign of the Kurojyoka, a traditional Kagoshima ceramic earthenware teapot for shochu, to fit modern lifestyles. The traditional Kurojyoka was shaped based on heating in a Japanese hearth, and the Satsuma ware craftsmen did not revise the Kurojyoka to fit their changing lifestyles, but this project is characterized by its sublimation into a modern Kurojyoka by revising this aspect of the project. The fact that the shape has been modified for the modern age.
- Dimensions & Packaging
- Kurojyoka, Width 120mm x Depth 146mm x Height 160mm
Cup, Width 75mm x Depth 75mm x Height 45mm
Warmer, Width 114mm x Depth 102mm x Height 63mm
Pitcher for Maewari, Width 80mm x Depth 84mm x Height 205mm - Tags
- Product Design, Redesign, Tableware, Sakeware, Kurojoka, Kurojoka6442, Satsuma ware, Earthenware shochu teapot
- Production Technology
- The redesigned Kurojyoka has a mass produced design so that it can be used as a modern earthenware teapot for shochu and as an everyday household item for enjoying shochu. It is made using casting molding, a technique for mass producing ceramics, in which muddy ceramic clay is poured into a plaster mold.
The material is porcelain, which is durable and can be used for commercial purposes.
The glaze uses shirasu from the Shirasu Plateau, a characteristic of Kagoshima's soil, with the aim of it becoming an everyday household item made from local materials. - Design Challenge
- In redesigning the Kurojyoka, we tried to make it a mass production type for easy general use, but there was a difficulty in that Kagoshima does not have mass production technology. Therefore, we asked a Nagasaki potter with mass production technology to manufacture the product, but used Kagoshima materials for the glaze, thereby creating a Kurojyoka with elements of the production area.
- Inspiration
- The project began with a request from MATHERuBA, which operates a cafe and store in Kagoshima, to redesign the Kurojyoka, a traditional Kagoshima porcelain earthenware teapot for shochu, to suit modern lifestyles and create an original product.
We therefore researched the origin of the shape of Kurojyoka for shochu traditionally used in Kagoshima, and found design inspiration in the abacus shape described in literature, which we redesigned into a shape that fits today's lifestyle. - Project Duration
- The project began in Kagoshima in February 2018 and ended in November 2019 and has been sold.
- Image Credits
- Image #1 : Photographer Masahiko Kukiyama
Image #2 : Photographer Masahiko Kukiyama
Image #3 : Photographer Masahiko Kukiyama
Image #4 : Photographer Masahiko Kukiyama
Image #5 : Photographer Masahiko Kukiyama
Sponsored
Explore Beyond Designers.org
Discover products, services and opportunities from our advertising partners.
More to Explore
Related Designs
Explore more award-winning designs from the same category, selected by merit.
