If you look up the word “nostalgic” in the dictionary, you will find that it means “being drawn to and yearning for something with which one had contact in the past”.
In reality, however, even if it is something you have never come into contact with or experienced in the past, you may still find it nostalgic.
In a TV programme once, I came across a scene where young people born in the Heisei era repeatedly describe Showa-era household items as nostalgic. But it seemed that they had never actually used them.

Even though you come across the thing for the first time, you find it nostalgic.
The reason why people have this kind of feeling when they see a certain form is probably because human activities such as daily living and culture have continued without interruption.
In the process of passing on various sorts of wisdom from the older to the younger, I think that memories are also passed on, which they have not experienced themselves. And these memories are reproduced as feelings and replaced by a sense of nostalgia.
My speciality is tableware, and the same could be said about this genre.

For instance, have you ever heard of vessels made using a technique called “pressed glass”?
This technique was developed in the USA in the 19th century. It differs from glassblowing in that molten glass is poured into a concave mould, and a convex mould is pressed on top. In Japan, pressed glass items were produced domestically from the Meiji to Showa eras, with designs tailored to Japanese tastes.
Although they use past masterpieces as models, the design that looks like chrysanthemum petals is their own original design.
The unique texture and comfortable thickness of the hand-pressed glass is the characteristic of the Kobayashis’ mamezara. Even I, who has never used pressed glass vessels before, feel a sense of nostalgia when I hold one in my hand, which is magical.

The memories of Japanese life and culture, which have continued uninterruptedly, must have been imprinted on my senses without my knowing it. I think that is why I feel nostalgia for pressed glass vessels that I have never used before.
Vessels of nostalgia make people feel relaxed.
It is precisely because we live in an uneasy time that we should pay attention to the “aesthetic sense of nostalgia” reproduced by modern makers, and try to bring into our lives the feeling of the good old days when we had more space to relax.

The mamezara (a small dish often with a diameter of less than 12 centimetres) in the image here uses this pressed glass technique, but is not a vintage item.
It is a modern vessel made by Kyoto-based glass artists Hiroshi and Nozomi Kobayashi.