In Store...

I've been  puting out a few new things including these old unused Japanese plastic buckles and buttons.  Some of them are not very good quality (and are priced accordingly) but they all have a lovely old retro character:

 

 

 

 

This is an old Meiji era banko yaki (banko ware) sweet bowl with a crab design on one side. I'll be putting it on the website as well. Old banko yaki is wonderfully whimsical and doesn't fit the images that a lot of people have of Japanese ceramics. Its character speaks for itself:

 

 

I just put out a roll of this cotton shibori:

 

 

 

Some old 'soroban' abacuses. These have a lovely character just to keep as objects. When I first went to Japan one of our English students gave me soroban lessons but I never became proficient at it - at all.  I had some very young (maybe 5 or 6yo)  students later on who also learned soroban and I was impressed with how quick they were at mental arithmetic. My husband Takashi still regularly uses a soroban for doing the accounts for his business: