Over The Years Of Being In The Aquatic Trade,

I have seen more than my fair share of dead, bleached corals,

“Arcadia” detail (2016) photo by Keizo Kioku, back in the day literally thousands of tons a year were being sold worldwide as aquatic and room decorations, and when I saw this I was amazed at the lifelike detail in this piece of apparently dead coral and sea urchins, it also depicts anemones, which of course do not leave a skeleton, but so lifelike, 

 in reality it is manmade, this is the work of Japanese ceramicist Eriko Inazaki, who painstakingly shapes and assembles each spine and piece by hand, born in 1972, Inazaki studied sculpture at Musashino Art University in Tokyo before going on to obtain her MFA in ceramics from Kyoto City University of Arts. She exhibited her work are various ceramics fairs and exhibitions but remained relatively under the radar until 2017 when her work was included in an craftsmanship exhibition that began touring Japan,

the video is amazing as using needles each crafted piece is painstakingly added, if you look carefully you can see the humidifier, which is constantly running to create a controlled environment that keeps her pieces from drying out as she works on them, I just hope whoever purchases the piece remembers to put it under a dust proof dome!