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Japanese Tea Room Sumi-Kago Charcoal Basket, ChikuOSai

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Directory: Artisan and Design: Folk Art: Pre 2000: item # 876464

Please refer to our stock # MOK2556 when inquiring.

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The Kura
16-1 ShimoWakakusa-Cho
Murasakino Kita-ku Kyoto 603-8234
tel.81-75-432-6980

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425.00

Japanese Tea Room Sumi-Kago Charcoal Basket, ChikuOSai
Soot stained bamboo (susudake) dances about the intricate rim of this fine hand-made paper lined tea room charcoal basket by ChikuSai. The corners of raw bamboo taper upward, secured with a crossed knot of thin sliced bamboo. The bottom is woven thickly in an intricate pattern with the sides of thin splices running below a belt of open windows. It is roughly 10 inches (25 cm) diameter and in perfect (unused) condition. These baskets were made by a good friend and respected teacher, the bamboo artist and Mia-Daiku (Temple carpenter) Kitagawa Susumu under his craftsmans name Chiku-O Sai (II) (b. 1932). Mr. Kitagawa was apprenticed from a young age to Ikenobo basket maker Chiku-OSai I. However in the backlash against traditionalism Japan embraced in the 1950s, he was forced to subsequently train as a traditional carpenter, establishing his own company which he ran until in his 70s while keeping his basketry skills polished in non-business hours. Using antique soot-stained bamboo (susu-take, highly prized as it takes decades to absorb the color) which he himself had saved from the ceilings old houses and temples, he has polished, sliced, bent and woven the stubborn media into these fine paper-lined kago. Unfortunately Mr. Kitagawa has succumbed to Alzheimer’s and is no longer producing these superb works of art. We arranged with his family to offer a number of his sumi-kago, the proceeds of which will go entirely to his family for his health care in the facility in which he now resides.


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