The big sibling in Yoshitomo Nara's We Are Punks porcelain series, this 300 cc mug features a vampire-fanged girl peering over a wall on its side with the quiet menace of someone who arrived first and has no intention of leaving. "We Are Punks" is printed on the exterior as both a title and a statement of intent. The image derives from Nara's 2011 colour-pencil drawing of the same name, part of a practice where childhood defiance and subcultural energy merge into a visual language recognisable across a room.
Made in Hasami ware from Nagasaki Prefecture, the mug is fired, glazed and finished in Japan. Hasami potters developed their craft supplying everyday tableware to the domestic market, which means the porcelain is built to be used, not merely admired. It is microwave and dishwasher safe. The white ground is clean and unglazed on the outside where the illustration sits, giving the print a tactile, almost paper-like quality that feels closer to a drawing than to a mass-produced transfer.
At 300 cc it holds enough coffee to start the morning with the same stubborn composure Nara's children have been modelling for over three decades. Pair it with the small mug: the two stack together and, like any well-conceived double act, gain from being seen as a set. That stacking detail is not accidental. Nara has long been interested in objects that nest inside one another. His room-sized installations are built as huts and cabins that shelter smaller works, creating a mise en abyme of intimacy. Two mugs sitting one inside the other carry a faint echo of that idea, scaled down to the kitchen shelf.
Critics often link Nara to the Superflat movement theorised by Takashi Murakami, but the comparison only goes so far: where Murakami runs a near-corporate operation with large production teams, Nara works alone, and what he produces is closer to a diary entry than a product launch. For a closer look at how Murakami's editions differ in technique and scale, see our article on Takashi Murakami's limited editions. Collectors drawn to the softer, more uncanny end of Nara's influence will find a natural counterpart in Roby Dwi Antono's pop-surrealist editions.
Context aside, the object speaks for itself: three hundred millilitres of Hasami porcelain, a vampire girl who refuses to blink, and the words "We Are Punks" facing anyone who reaches for your shelf.
