In 1834, a glass craftsman named Kagaya Kyūbei began cutting patterns into imported glass in his Edo workshop, inspired by English cut crystal that arrived on trade ships. His techniques spread through the low city — the shitamachi of east Edo, present-day Sumida Ward — where craftsmen adapted the Western cutting method to Japanese sensibilities: less depth, more geometry, patterns drawn from kimono and lacquerware.
Edo Kiriko was nearly lost twice: first in the Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923, then in the firebombing of Tokyo in 1945. Each time, the few remaining craftsmen rebuilt the tradition from memory. Today, only about 60 active craftsmen are designated traditional artisans of Edo Kiriko — the annual output is small enough that each piece is individually numbered.
The glass blank — typically a double-layered piece with colored glass over clear — is pressed against a rotating iron wheel fed with a slurry of water and abrasive. The cutter guides the glass, never the wheel; the pattern emerges from the cutter's memory of where the wheel has been. A single whisky glass requires 40 to 60 individual cuts, each one irreversible.
The final step is polishing with a wooden wheel and oxide powder until the cuts catch light from every angle. The colored layer — red, blue, indigo, or amber — reveals itself fully only after polishing: what was an opaque scratch becomes a window into color.