HAKUSAKU by Kenji Abe explores aircraft material duralumin for sake cups collection

Kenji Abe, a product designer who hails from Tokyo covers all genres from electronics to interior items and crafts in his designs. He has also exhibited his works at the London Design Festival and has also been awarded the Lexus Design Award and Good Design Award. Enhancing the tasting experience of sake, Kenji introduced the series of cups which are intricately machined from duralumin sheets, a material which is used in aircraft parts. According to him, aircraft parts are not industrial manufacturing but are a part of the craft. He wanted to imbibe this same trait into his cups as to him, he seeks the inevitable beauty from exploration of materials, processing methods and structures. “Aircraft parts are not mass-produced items but are carefully made one by one by the hands of craftsmen. I felt that they were no longer industrial products but crafts, and I wanted to give form to this," shared Kenji Abe.

Perfectly microtextured, the cups were designed to disembark from a user's line of vision, hereby allowing the sake to land perfectly onto the taste receptors. Kenji’s aimed to make the rim of the cup as thin as possible so that the flavours of the sake can be transferred more directly. But thinness also has its limits, an excessively thin lip can be disquieting and, in turn, can ruin the tasting experience. To achieve that perfect rim thickness, his team created various prototype vessels differing in lip thickness. “There are two important points when examining the prototypes of mouthpieces. The first is of course the thickness. If it is too thin, it becomes very painful to the mouth, so it was necessary to adjust it to a reasonably comfortable thickness. The second is the curve. The shape of the mouthpiece widens upwards like a trumpet (wind instrument) so that the mouthpiece touches your lips and you can drink gently from the cup,” explained Abe.

The Japanese cut glass-inspired ‘kiriko’ texture added a unique visual appeal. These intricate patterns in straight and curved lines widened the surface area of the cup, acting as a sandwiched layer between the internal covering and one's fingers. Resulting in a beautiful satin finish that adds to their aesthetics along with the deliberately carved designs on the surface. Duralumin was taken as a prime material as it also helped the prototype reach the extreme thinness of 0.6 mm having stringent stability with ultra-precise machining. Ultra-precise machining was used to produce the HAKUSAKU collection, which is normally used in the manufacturing of aircraft components. When asked about the reason behind using duralumin as the material, Kenji shared, “ Duralumin material was the one that the aircraft parts manufacturer (ATSUTA KIGYO Co., Ltd) I met was best at and it is also the same material used in aircraft, so it made the produced material exceptionally tough”

On prompting him for the challenges faced in the process of making sake cups of that perfect thinness he said, “ It was difficult to realise the designs as they were so detailed that it was often impossible to process them exactly as they were shaped. We repeated prototypes over and over again with the engineers”. The surface treatment was challenging too, as it was tricky to get the perfect colour and shine at once, so the team often needed to reconsider the material and coating method to overcome the issue.

The key considerations when looking at the sake pieces ranged from the contours of the mouthpieces to the faceted patterns on the exterior, from the sensation one gets when holding the cup in their hand to how the interior appears when filled with the beverage. The HAKUSAKU collection not only has the minimum thickness of rim and the beauty of the ‘kiriko’ patterns but also these are cups which enhance one’s experience while drinking, it transfers the sake directly to one’s taste buds. Kenji Abe through his interest in experimenting with different materials and technologies induced a series of cups that lets you taste the aroma of the sake directly, which lets you uplift your tasting experience forgetting the presence of the vessel.

Text by Pratishtha Vashishth