The Rainbow ColorBorn at Sea

This glass studio's only product became obsolete. The thing that saved it was a handful of sand someone scooped off a beach. Here's how.

In 1949, Hokuyo Glass (北洋硝子) in Aomori prefecture began making glass fishing floats called ukidama (浮き玉). By 1973 it was Japan's biggest producer. Then plastic floats replaced glass, and their main product was gone.

The artisans still had one thing, the skill to blow glass by hand. They just had nothing left worth making with it. So where does the sand come in?

One of them was walking Shichiri Nagahama (七里長浜), a beach down the Aomori coast, and on impulse dropped a handful of its sand into the glass mix. It came out a deep green they had never made before. That accident became their first original color.

From there they built their own color library, over a hundred shades now, crushed into grains called shimo (シモ) and layered onto hot glass to paint Aomori's seasons. Every piece still blown freehand in mid-air, no mold, a technique called chubuki (宙吹き).

Today it's called Tsugaru Vidro (津軽びいどろ), and it used everywhere from flower vases to Starbucks collaborations.