First Bloom

This series of vases captures the moment when the first flower bud of a young juniper, grown in the winds of Ulleungdo, bursts open. As the tree puts down roots and spreads its branches, the life it has carried within at last comes into flower. The work expresses the excitement of that beginning and the strength of growth.

The body, shaped from clay, is carved with the juniper’s twisted trunk and grain, then coated layer upon layer with ottchil (Korean natural lacquer), which adds depth to the grain and a subtle lustre. The branches, reaching out in different directions, each reveal a vitality growing in its own form, and the purple glaze on the inside symbolises the energy of flowering held within the tree.

In this work, the act of placing a flower is what completes the young juniper’s first flowering. When a single flower is set in the empty space between the branches, the lines of the ceramic trunk and the real flower join, and the vase becomes a tree that has flowered for the first time. As each person who uses it decides where the flower sits and which way it faces, they create their own moment of ‘first bloom’.

First Bloom is a vessel that holds, in everyday life, the moment a living thing first brings its own flower into bloom. Through clay, ottchil and a single flower, it speaks of the possibility held in a small, tender beginning, and of the time yet to unfold.