Product name: HIFU Glass Ear Cuffs
Artist: Haruna Sugie (杉江はるな)
Material: Borosilicate glass
Technique: Lampworking (solid work)
Sizes: One-of-a-kind creations, only one size per style
Notes: Each piece of accessory will be gift wrapped in the original gift boxes.
Handcrafted in Tokyo, Japan
HIFU Series
This series emerged during the COVID-19 pandemic, a time defined by isolation and the inability to meet others. While distancing protected the body from infection, it often left the mind feeling unguarded and alone. This condition, though intensified by the pandemic, reflects a broader reality—our continual exposure to subtle emotional harm and quiet loneliness within everyday life. Considering the skin as a physical boundary that protects the body, she began to question what might protect the invisible realm of the mind. In this work, thin, transparent layers of glass are worn as a “second skin” for the mind—gently enveloping and safeguarding it from the anxieties and unseen aggressions of contemporary society.
About Haruna Sugie:
Born in 1997 in Aichi, Japan. Lives and works in Tokyo. Sugie is a glass artist whose practice explores the interrelationship between the body, emotion, and perception. She began studying lampworking at Khan Glass Works in 2019. She received her BFA in Glass from the Department of Crafts and Industrial Design at Musashino Art University in 2022, and completed her MFA in Glass at the Graduate School of Fine Arts, Tokyo University of the Arts in 2024. Working primarily with lampworking techniques using an oxygen burner, each piece is meticulously handcrafted. Her work engages with the inherent tension between fragility and strength within glass, expressing it as a metaphor for the delicate equilibrium that resides within human existence. Sugie creates both wearable works and spatial objects as extensions of the same line of inquiry. Through materials such as glass and mirrors, she examines the boundaries between self and other, and between the visible and the invisible. Through the properties of glass—transparency, reflection, and distortion—her practice further seeks to reconsider the formation and perception of the self within the evershifting conditions of contemporary society.
