How a Tulip Field in Amsterdam Inspired My Colorful Matcha Bowls

Japan has four seasons, and a botanical garden in spring is beautiful. My mother and my grandmother love flowers, and they went to the gardens almost every year.

I was never especially interested in flowers myself. I never felt like going to a garden on my own. In Kyoto, the cherry blossoms were everywhere in spring, even without visiting a garden. Maybe that was enough for me, and I never noticed.

But the tulip garden in Amsterdam moved me. I went in the spring, and it happened to be tulip season.

Long bands of orange, pink, purple, white and red under a blue sky, with a canal alongside.

More Tulips Than I Could Have Imagined

I went to the tulip garden at Keukenhof.

There was an enormous variety of tulips, far more kinds than I knew existed. It was a view beyond anything I had imagined. Someone who had never cared about tulips was completely won over.

Red tulips with white edges, and a single pale cream one among them.

A tulip with pink flame markings next to pale pink hyacinths.

The Fields Beyond the Garden

The garden was not the only place to see tulips. Outside it, there were large fields too.

So I cycled through them for more than an hour, enjoying the fields as I went. Rows of color, one after another, and the colors kept changing as I moved.

A field of red and orange under a blue sky.

A close-up of a field, with orange and red tulips and pale pink and white ones in diagonal bands.

Color That Moves From One to the Next

What stayed with me was the colors themselves, and the way the garden was designed. The shades of the tulips sat together in soft gradations, colorful and sweet.

I wanted to bring out those colors in my own work. I wanted that cheerful, tulip-like gradient in clay.

Red, pink, white, orange and purple tulips growing close together.

Turning It Into Glaze

That wish became a series of matcha bowls with airbrushed designs.

Airbrushing lets one color melt softly into the next, which suits a gradient. I use water-based glazes for it. With the airbrush, they need a low-temperature clear glaze on top, because a high-temperature clear makes the color disappear. That was a lesson I learned along the way.

I am not trying to copy a tulip. I am trying to hold on to the colors and the feeling of that trip.

A cup glazed in a gradient of coral, orange, yellow and blue.

A matcha set with a cup, a spouted bowl, a whisk and a scoop, glazed in a watercolor-like gradient of coral pink and pale yellow.

A Small Daily Object

A matcha bowl is something you hold in both hands. I like the idea that colors from a spring in the Netherlands can sit quietly in that moment.

Most people who use one will never know about Keukenhof or the bike ride. That is fine. The color carries it anyway.

If you would like to see the bowls, you can find the collection here: Matcha Bowls at The Way of Clay

Mari is a handmade pottery artist based in Marina del Rey, California. She makes matcha bowls, mugs, plates, and more. Shop the current collection at thewayofclay.net.