Story
01
My mother is blind
She has never seen my work. Not the cups, not the glaze, not the blue lines I draw by hand.
But she feels them.
She runs her fingers along the rim. She cups it with both hands, feeling its shape, its warmth. She listens to the sound it makes when something is poured in.
For her, a cup was never something to look at. It was something to hold, to trust, to know without seeing.
I grew up watching her hands read the world. Long before I understood it, she taught me this: that touch, too, is its own kind of sight.
02
Amakusa, Kumamoto
My hometown is Amakusa, in Kumamoto. A place where only the sea, and quiet time, exist.
Growing up watching my mother's hands, at some point, I wanted to shape things with my own.
Working with clay was an extension of that. The moment a form is born on the wheel. One shift of the fingers changes the whole expression of a vessel.
Crocheting thread, arranging the air of a room — different methods, but the same root.
I have always trusted what is born through touch, more than what is merely seen.
Now, I live in Tel Aviv. Far from where I was born, still making, with the same hands, in the same way.
Why SIBUBU was born
03
My mother's hands, and mine. Where the two overlap, SIBUBU was born.
A shape you can know without seeing. Trace it with your fingers, and you feel where the line rises. Cup it with both hands, and you feel it sway. Pour into it, and the sound changes.
It tilts, but it does not fall. It sways, and returns to where it was.
That was exactly what my mother had taught me. Unseen, but not lost. Shaken, but never gone.
Maybe the shape of SIBUBU is simply what I traced in clay — the sense I once received from her.
The name
04
The name SIBUBU comes from the Hebrew word "סיבוב" (sibuv) — meaning "to turn," "to spin."
Since coming to Tel Aviv, I've heard this word again and again in everyday life. A road turns. A story turns. The seasons turn.
The way the cup tilts but never falls, always returning to where it began — that was exactly what this word meant.
A technique born in Japan, a word I found in Israel.
Two places, far apart, overlapping in a single name.
Maybe SIBUBU is a name like a crossroads — of every place I've walked through, until now.
05
Bridge to Picture Book
The story doesn't end here.
There's more about my mother. Smaller moments that led to SIBUBU. The parts that never quite became words.
They're kept inside the picture book.
Read the rest, there → [ link to Picture Book page ]