30-Aug-2024
The rain is incredibly heavy today, and the river has overflowed, flooding the roads. Because of this, I can’t make it to my workshop, so I’m taking a break from work today for the first time in a while. There has been some damage in my area, but the typhoon is still about two days away from reaching us. We’ll need to stay on high alert for the next few days.
Yesterday, I began selling the 4-sun double compartment Himitsubako, two of which features the “line” pattern. Recently, I’ve been making these line pattern boxes from time to time again. I originally came up with this design in 1999 when I was just 29 years old (young!). Until then, no boxes had featured such a pattern. At that time, I was still working at a local woodworking company, and as part of my job, I entered a product with this line design into a local woodworking competition. I ended up winning an award, which made the president of the company very happy. Later that year, I created a larger box with this line pattern and entered it into a national competition in Japan. I won a major award there as well. One of the judges praised the box, saying, “This product changes the conventional wisdom of traditional Hakone Yosegi!” At the time, I wasn’t yet making Himitsubako; I applied the line pattern to normal wooden boxes (like a letter box). I’ll share photos of the products I made at that time soon. The name of the product I made back then was “Sen-moyou Kabuse-bako”in Japanese.
This award was the most prestigious in the history of our region, and it surprised the local community. The recognition led to coverage in newspapers and on local TV, which resulted in receiving requests to create commemorative gifts for the local government. For a time, I was often making the line pattern box due to the increased demand.
In 2006, I made the line pattern further and created designs like the one shown in the photo. This design became the top design on this site. Instead of thin lines, it features thicker yosegi lines inlaid into the wood. This box is quite unique because it contains a hexagonal Himitsubako inside. In other words, it’s a nested box. Of course, the outer box itself is also a Himitsubako. It was made as a limited edition. There’s also other line pattern, which I’ll introduce later. The product of line pattern is well-received, and I should probably make more of them, but since each line is inlaid one by one, it’s quite challenging to produce a large quantity. That’s why I only make these boxes occasionally. Although I still make this line pattern from time to time, I have many other line patterns as well, and I’m considering making more of them in the future 😄
