Hippopotamus and Hedgehog unglazed pottery by Ms. Ikuko Umehara 梅原育子

The unglazed pottery animals I am going to introduce today are made by my favourite craftswoman or artist called Ms. Ikuko Umehara from Kyoto. These are all made by hand without using forming blocks or molds, so the shapes are all different. She has been making various animals like cats, pigs, sheeps etc, but the…

Hakone yosegizaiku marquetry fan 寄木細工の団扇

Hakone in Kanagawa prefecture of Japan has been famous for various wooden products, that is mainly because of the location as being surrounded by a wide variety of woods. They, therefore, developped skills to make beautiful Yosegi marquetry and Zougan (inlaid). This beautiful fan is made of bamboo and one side of the round area is…

Porcelain small plate chopsticks rest

Chopsticks are very important for many Japanese people because we use them everyday, so many people have their own personal chopsticks at home and they tend to have their favoriticism about what chopsticks should be etc. We generally avoid putting the chopsticks directly onto the table or plate, because they directly go into our mouth….

Echizen Hiryu handcrafted paper fan 飛龍和紙団扇 Artwind

Echizen in Fukui prefecture is famous for producing high quality handcrafted paper. This particular type of washi is produced with special technique called Hiryu （飛龍）, which Mr.  Osada originally developped. This hiryu technique enables the washi craftsmen to creat more artistic paper and using that hiryu washi, Mr. Osada made these fans, which we often use in…

Porcelain small bottle by Mr. Shinya Taniguchi

I have already introduced Mr. Taniguchi on my previous blog, so I will skip the details. For those interested in who Mr. Tanigushi is, you can check this blog.   These are small porcelain bottles Mr. Taniguchi created and all of them have different shapes. The diameter of these bottles are around 7cm, so not so…