Preserved Flower Art Piece "Tokiyama Ukiishi"

A stone that holds a garden — and waits for a flower

Something between a sculpture and a vase.
UKIISHI — "floating stone" — begins with a piece of volcanic rock from Kagoshima, southern Japan. The stone is dressed by hand with preserved moss and leaves, layered to suggest the floor of a forest: dense in places, open in others, green that holds for two to three years without water or soil. Tucked inside the moss is a small glass bud vase. It is easy to miss at first. That is part of the design.

The stone changes with what you put in it.
The moss landscape is complete on its own. But the vase is an invitation — to stop on a walk and pick something small: a sprig, a stem, a single bloom from whatever is growing nearby. Placed into the stone, it becomes part of the composition. The scene shifts. A few days later, you replace it with something else. The stone stays; the flowers move through it like seasons.

The maker: Norihiko Kamei / AME
Kamei is a visual artist and ikebana master based in Kita-Kamakura. He graduated from Tokyo Zokei University Graduate School in 2007 and holds a teaching certification in the Sogetsu school of ikebana. His work has been exhibited in the Netherlands, France, and Germany. AME — his art product brand — is built on a single premise: natural landscapes, compressed to fit in the palm of your hand. UKIISHI extends that premise into something you can keep changing, season by season, for as long as the moss holds its green.

Because each stone is selected and arranged individually, the shape, color, and exact moss composition will differ from the photographs. The stone cannot be specified. What arrives will be its own.

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Specifications

Diameter: approx. 4.7 in (120 mm)
Box: W 4.9 × D 4.3 × H 3.5 in (125 × 110 × 90 mm)
Materials: Preserved flowers (moss, leaves), volcanic stone (Kagoshima), glass bud vase
Display life: Approx. 2 – 3 years
Stone shape and color are selected by the maker — cannot be specified
Includes: Stone with moss arrangement, glass bud vase (inserted)