Yoshihiro Kusano, Akira Doi, Minoru Fukuhara, Tatsuo Fujii, Jun Takada, Ryu Murakami, Laurence Anthony, Yasunori Ikeda and Mikio Takano

This study was conducted by 9 scholars from 4 universities and 1 research organization, with the aims of scientifically exploring the "Hidasuki" (a reddish pattern which was believed to have been created by mere chance), a mystery on Bizen stoneware, and establishing control technology based upon the principals discovered in their exploration. They successfully unraveled one of the wonders in the beauty of artifacts which have been hidden for more than 1,000 years.
The members of the team primarily come from 2 universities in Okayama, the birthplace of Bizen stoneware, although none of them are potters. This is a joint study by a group of experts from metal engineering, mineralogy, metallurgy, applied chemistry, inorganic chemistry and magnetic material science. It is difficult for us to discern who has participated in which area specifically, but based on the results of past studies of the joint researchers, we can understand how their specialties are different but at the same time overlapped with one another. Through the fusion of inorganic analysis, stereoscopic and electron microscopic observation methods, they probed into the mystery of "Hidasuki" or the beauty of reddish color which is only fortuitously formed.
Techniques are well understood in terms of technical art. A concerto played by the earth of Bizen, rice straws and fire produce the scarlet color on the surface of the Bizen stoneware, without any glaze. It is indeed astonishing that their study has cast light on the wondrous charm of the red color, which had been believed to have been only a chance phenomenon. I have been convinced by the significance of this prize.
Once known, everything makes sense logically. It takes place in the following 3 steps:

1. A liquid phase forms by a reaction between Bizen-clay including 2-3 wt% of Fe₂O₃ and potassium provided by rice straw at high temperature. The sample heated without rice straw shows a light brown color, which is caused by the formation of Fe³⁺-containing mullite, 3(Al,Fe)₂O₃·2SiO₂. This is the color of Bizen earthenware.
2. Corundum (α-Al₂O₃) precipitates as hexagonal platelike crystals (~2µm) in the liquid phase.
3. On the edges of the corundum crystals, hematite (α-Fe₂O₃) grows epitaxially. The growth continues with the primary corundum crystals eventually becoming completely covered by hematite.

Andrew Parker

This year's Silver Prize-winning piece also concerns the structural color seen on the surface of an organism, as in the last year. However, the difference is in its immense time scale; the work is connected to evolution of 540 million years.
The biological natural world is replete with physical colors derived from structure as well as chemical colors (dyeing agents) represented by the colors of flowers. For instance, the structural color includes the colors of wings of various insects such as the Morpho butterfly, colors of fish scales, bird feathers and many marine animals.
Prof. Parker, an expert of natural history, fortuitously discovered structural color in a fine barbel of small marine shrimp 10 years ago. It is a matter of course that he, as an expert of natural history, is curious about the evolutionary origin of such structural color. Later, aided by a chance occurrence, he discovered a green color remaining on the surface of a gold beetle fossil from approximately 49 million years ago. With this fossil as a clue, he assumed that it would be possible to reproduce color if a slight structure still remained in the fossil. Such reproducibility marks a significantly different feature between structural color and chemical color that fades after several years. In other words, this is "a fossil of color." Under this assumption, he carried out studies on the color of fossils and finally traced them back to the Cambrian Age, some 540 million years ago. As of now, it is reported that the surface structures of several types of biological fossils, such as Canadia and Wiwaxia, have been preserved and they are presumably related to structural color. Based upon this hypothesis, Prof. Parker reports that the marine biological world of 540 million years ago was filled with iridescent structural colors.
Prof. Parker, as a biologist, further pursued the evolutionary meaning of this discovery. He draws the conclusion that the emergence of structural color and the invention of color perception to distinguish colors led to the subsequent evolutionary explosion (the explosion in the Cambrian). His entry includes his book "In the Blink of Eye." The book's scientific significance should be left to the judgments of scholars in relevant fields.

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Dominic Man-Kit Lam

Prof. Lam made it possible to produce various colors in the emulsion of a monochromatic photograph with his original method using Mie scattering. In Mie scattering, particles are substantially smaller than wavelengths. In general, milk and wheat flour are white due to irregular reflection of light wavelength particles. When the particles are sufficiently smaller than the wavelengths, matter becomes transparent, whereas in the opposite case, matter reflects the colors of particles. In an irregular aggregation of particles having similar sizes of wavelengths, matter turns white, regardless of the colors and forms of the particles. It was widely believed also that the red color of Venetian glass originated in the Mie scattering of gold colloid. It is difficult to control Mie scattering, although it is a familiar phenomenon, due to its irregular structure, as mentioned earlier.
He created various pieces full of Chinese aesthetic sense using the above method. In particular, we can see its magnificent hues in his abstract objects.

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Yuko Nagayama

This work has put an illusionary trick to practical use whereby the cut-off effect of light with two polarizing plates that differ in the direction of polarization by 90 degrees produces a phenomenon resembling a black barrier within a cylinder. This was applied to the façade of a building and created the illusion of vertical stripes on a busy Kyoto street. Its principle works as follows: oblong polarizing plates differing in the direction of polarization by 90 degrees are prepared and alternately pasted on a glass plate in a vertical striped pattern. This glass plate has a transparent polarizing plate and is seemingly thus identical to normal glass at a glance. However, when a piece of this glass, onto which polarizing plates are pasted, is set against another that has the approximate breadth of the oblong plate that forms stripes, the above trick emerges as a wall of, in this case, black vertical stripes. The pattern can be maneuvered so that the wall of stripes starts rotating, together with the visual angle of the viewer.
The façade of 6m x 25m is the largest case so far in the world where polarizing plates have been used. This young architect, who has not yet turned 30, has successfully created novel beauty at a street corner with this illusionary trick effect. This is dynamic beauty produced by the relationship between the pedestrian and the façade of the polarizing plate. (Comment by Tetsuzo Kawamoto)

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