Ritsue Mishima (b. 1962, Kyoto) is a Japanese-born glass artist working between Venice and Kyoto. Mishima settled in Venice in 1989 and since then has been creating glass sculptures from the purest form of glass — Venetian see-through cristallo. Mishima collaborates with the renowned glass smiths of Murano, including Venetian master Andrea Zilio and the two to four serventi of Fornace Anfora.
See-through cristallo glass was invented in Murano in 1450, and Mishima takes advantage of the translucency and viscosity of this medium to create sculptures which bear the contours of light while becoming parts of the environments. “Transparency contains all colours,” Mishima has said of her choice to eschew the colourful Murano glass tradition. While working in the Murano tradition, Mishima adds a delicate Japanese minimalism to this legacy, oscillating between light, matter, natural and artificial processes. Mishima’s glass sculptures are thus a hybrid of Eastern and Western traditions.
Her abstract, organically inspired forms develop naturally, without a prescribed plan, as she creates clay models simultaneously while glassblowers create her pieces. Mishima follows every single step of the production and continually intervenes to bring the design to life. She also uses classical Venetian hot decorative techniques, such as wings formed with pincers. Only after detailed reworking in the annealed state is each piece considered finished. Mishima painstakingly works out the surface structures and three-dimensional decoration of her sculptures; many pieces are cut in detail or polished so that the light appears differently each time, in an attempt to convey the luminosity of the Venetian lagoon that inspires her work.
Mishima’s sculptures can be found in public collections such as the Musée des Arts Decoratifs in Paris, the Museum Boijmans in Rotterdam, the The Ernsting Foundation Alter Hof Herding in Germany, among others. She received the Giorgio Armani Award from Sotheby's, London in 2001, and has been nominated for the Bvlgari Avrora Award in Japan in 2022.