Image: Kobe City Museum
Kobe City Museum is currently presenting a collection display of glassware made by Miyoshi Glassworks, the Osaka manufacturer founded in 1890. The exhibition, titled ‘Miyoshi Glassware Exhibition’ on the museum’s site, runs from July 11 to August 23, 2026, and focuses on domestic glass objects produced from the Meiji period through the Showa period.
According to the museum’s description, Miyoshi Glassworks was established in Osaka’s Nishienda-cho area, now part of Osaka’s Naniwa ward, by Miyoshi Shikazo. The company mainly produced glassware through a press-molding method that poured molten glass into moulds made from two or more parts. The museum notes that some of the surviving pieces bear marks such as ‘NT’ and ‘TN’, which identify the trademark used by the wholesaler Nonomura Toisuke, who handled sales.
The display places these marks and other identifying details at the center of the story. Rather than showing glassware as isolated decorative objects, the museum frames them as manufactured goods tied to distribution, branding and the everyday use of glass in modern Japan. The exhibition introduces plates, bowls and cups made for daily life, alongside items such as lidded containers, compotes and a glass feeding bottle.
The museum also points to the strong reception these products once received. Miyoshi Glassworks and Nonomura exhibited glassware at contemporary expositions, and the museum cites an award of ‘Progress Second Class’ at the Fourth National Industrial Exhibition in 1895. The site says documentary sources from the period indicate that the company’s glassware was highly regarded at the time.
Works listed for the exhibition span a broad chronology, from late 19th-century pieces to items from the first half of the 20th century. Among them are a blue glass plate with an aphoristic inscription, a brown plate with arched ray and hail patterns, a set of three flower-linked-pattern glass bowls, a small oval yellow-green dish with sword chrysanthemum and basket motifs, a glass lidded vessel with a play motif, and a glass feeding bottle. The museum also includes later examples such as a small plate with wisteria-tower motifs, which was registered as a design in 1924, and a small bowl with cross and ribbed decoration from the Taisho to early Showa era.
All of the works are drawn from the museum’s own holdings, specifically the ‘vido-giyaman-glass’ collection, and the presentation is part of the museum’s collection display rather than a temporary special exhibition. The museum says the show examines how glassware spread into people’s lives by tracing the manufacturer information and trademarks attached to the vessels themselves, as well as the forms and functions of the objects on view at Kobe City Museum through August 23, 2026.
