Karakusa Japanese Watch Face

WabiFace Karakusa brings an old Imari porcelain plate, scrolling vine and all, to your Wear OS smartwatch.

🍶 A PLATE FROM THE OLD KILNS
Ko-Imari is the porcelain that left Arita for the world: a cobalt ground laid under the glaze, and over it a karakusa scroll — the endless vine — drawn in white with coral peonies, green leaves and gilt stippling worked in among it. Six white reserves are sunk into the ground behind rims of coral and gold, three above and three below, and a band of plain white glaze runs between them from one edge of the plate to the other. This plate has been used: it is crazed all over, an old crack runs across its lower left, and four bronze staples hold that crack shut. None of that has been cleaned up. A plate that was worth repairing is a plate that was loved, and the repair is part of the object.

✨ THE RUNNING LIGHT
A highlight travels the glazed lip of the plate, one full lap every minute. It reads the seconds the way a turning glaze catches the light, and it can be switched off for a still plate.

⌚ SIX RESERVES
Each of the six reserves holds a complication, and every one of them is ring-capable: give a reserve a data source that reports a goal and it draws a progress ring inside the rim, around the value. Battery does this out of the box; assign a step goal or an exercise ring and those fill too. Because the potter did not draw the six reserves the same size, the rings are not the same size either — each one is measured to its own reserve.

🕐 THE TIME
The white glaze band crosses the entire plate and carries no decoration at all, so the hour and minute sit on it at full size with nothing behind them to read through. It is the reason this plate became a digital face.

📅 THE CALENDAR
The band is wide enough to seat the calendar beside the time rather than above it: month over day at one end, weekday over seconds at the other, mirrored left and right. The calendar and the seconds can each be turned off.

🎨 FOUR GROUNDS
Ai (gosu blue), Midori (green), Murasaki (aubergine) and Sumi (ink black) — four grounds a kiln could pull from the same drawing. Only the ground changes: the white vine, the coral peonies, the green leaves, the gilding and the six white reserves are the same pixels in every one, which is what a kiln does when it changes ground. The drawing is the drawing; the field behind it is not.

🖌 THREE INLAYS
Sumi (ink black), Gosu (cobalt blue) and Bengara (iron red) — pigments this ware was actually painted with. Everything the type lands on is white glaze, so the inlay is dark, and one choice moves the time, the calendar, the seconds, the complication text and the goal rings together, the way a single painter would have ground them all. In always-on each inlay switches to its own pale tone so the reading stays legible on black.

🌙 AMBIENT MODE
The plate falls away and the six reserves stay as thin lit rings, with a fine ring at the lip and the hour redrawn above them, so the arrangement is still recognisable at a glance while the display is dimmed.

🎴 DETAILS
- An Imari plate kept at full resolution, crazing and all
- A karakusa scroll of white vine, coral peonies, green leaves and gilt stippling
- An old crack and its four bronze staples, kept rather than mended away
- Six coral-and-gold reserves, each a complication that can carry a goal ring

🎴 MORE FROM WABIFACE
Kyoto, our free Japanese watch face: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=jp.wabiface.kyoto

🌸 ABOUT WABIFACE
WabiFace is a collection of watch faces celebrating Japanese aesthetics — wabi-sabi, mono no aware, and the dignified passage of time.

Requires Wear OS 5 or later. Compatible with Pixel Watch, Galaxy Watch, and other Wear OS 5+ smartwatches.

Artwork created with AI assistance and reviewed by the developer.

Please check your watch OS version before purchasing.

For support: [email protected]
Website: https://wabiface.jp