Official 1972 Sapporo Winter Olympics 'sacred vessel' cauldron, consisting of a cast-blackened aluminum alloy bowl with burner insert, measuring an overall 10.25″ x 5″ x 9.25″, impressed on the top with the Sapporo Games logo, and the bottom engraved "Nikkei" and "Yanagi." The Sapporo torch designer, Sori Yanagi, was a pioneer of Japanese industrial design, whose simplistic and pure use of lines and curves were regarded as patently Japanese as they were universal. Inspired by the shape of the Olympic cauldron, the vessel is described in the Official Report of the XIth Olympic Winter Games: 'This vessel was used as the 'intermediary' in transferring the Sacred Flame from the burner-carrier to the Olympic Torch and vice-versa during the ceremonies performed upon arrival at and departure from each overnight stopping place along the relay course.' A very scarce piece, this is the first example we have offered.
For the Sapporo relay, the torch was filled with priming and smoke-producing powder designed to burn for ten minutes for torches carried by runners and for fourteen minutes for those transported in cars. The Olympic flame was lit on December 28, 1971, in Olympia, Greece, and flown to Okinawa Island for the start of the Japanese relay, a massive undertaking that lasted 38 days and covered just under 19,000 km by an estimated 16,300 torchbearers—nearly all of whom shared a torch. Representing the first Winter Olympics to be held outside Europe and North America, the Sapporo Games proved to be an extravagant and groundbreaking event for the international athletic community.
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