Blue Emptiness,
Summer Stillness.

Ceramics by Mariko Chiba and cloth dyed by Yurika Saito, set through a Berlin tea room for one week — with both makers in the room. Everything was made to be held, not displayed, and some of it was for sale.

空と雲 — 青

Yurika Saito's indigo-dyed cloth being hung in the tea room

土The clay

Three series, made for the hand.

Mariko Chiba's tea ware — teapots, kyusu, cups, gaiwan, strainers — comes in three series shaped around one summer thought: the cool of a breeze, the depth of open water, the stillness inside both. Some glazes carry iron, and iron never behaves. The blues are ash: for her Prussian Blue series Mariko makes the glaze herself, from the ash of local birch and beech — something few potters still do, in Europe especially. Either way, every piece keeps a little unpredictability the kiln decided.

Nothing sat behind glass. On the opening Sunday the tea was poured into them.

Mariko Chiba · @marikokeramik

藍The cloth

Dyed with tea waste, indigo and iron.

Yurika Saito's cloths hang over the tatami and through the room — dyed with tea waste, indigo, and iron. The same iron that moves in the glazes moves in the fabric; clay and cloth end up speaking one language of depth and variation. The colours shift with the day's light.

Blue for sky, white for cloud — the room wears the season for a week.

Yurika Saito · @yurika_livingdyeing

房The room

Both makers were in the room.

The exhibition kept the tea bar's hours, Wednesday to Sunday, 14:00–18:00, with no ticket and no booking. Mariko and Yurika were in the room through the week.

Pieces and cloth were for sale through the week.

Mariko Chiba's kyusu and cups on an old wooden board

Yurika Saito's dye jars — indigo and tea waste on fig leaves

The exhibition · closed

Sunday 2 — Sunday 9 August 2026
Wed–Sun · 14:00–18:00

Kissabō · Kopenhagener Str. 16, Berlin. The exhibition ran inside regular service; the tea bar is open Wednesday to Sunday, 14:00–18:00.

The opening Sunday · Breathing Summer

Three courses of tea,
Sun 2 August

The exhibition opened with 夏の三道茶 — Shao Dao Zhao, the Bai way, poured by Kwok Ying von Beuningen of the Berlin Handcrafts Collective — @kwokying_tea_daily. The food was Ayami Awazuhara's — @wolke_be — regional. Two afternoon sittings and a private evening, five seats each.