In 1989, Japanese designer and sculptor Ritsue Mishima moved to Venice, Italy, where she became enthralled by the glass created on the island of Murano. After a fruitless search for the perfect vase, she began making her own pieces, first traditional vases and then more abstract objects. Since then, she has learned the techniques of these Italian master craftsmen, working side by side to create delicate expressions in transparent, colorless glass, which reflect and refract the light and color around them. “Transparency contains all colors,” Mishima has said of her choice to eschew the colorful Murano glass tradition. Her abstract, organically inspired forms develop naturally, without a prescribed plan, as she creates clay models simultaneously while glassblowers create her pieces.