April 2022

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[Reasons for the Beauty of Handwork]

"Mingu" is a general term for old-fashioned utensils and objects that people have made and used for everyday needs, and is almost synonymous with "daily necessities." In modern times, it excludes products mass-produced by machines.

Tools of daily life have been made by hand, depending on the climate and culture. In this issue, we introduce pot stands from our store's line of pot stands that have a strong folkloric flavor.

Okinawa Mingu's Getto Coaster is made from a plant called getto, which grows wild in Okinawa. Gekko is a member of the ginger family and is found in Southeast Asia and southern Asia. It is fragrant and has high antibacterial properties, and is used not only for cutout cushion, but also for wrapping sweets and cosmetics.

On Sado Island in Niigata Prefecture, there are pot stands made from straw after rice has been harvested. Straw has long been used for a variety of purposes because it is resistant to decay when sufficiently dried, easy to store, and strong. The same is true of waraji (straw sandals), mino (straw raincoat), and shimenawa (sacred straw ropes).

In Sori Yanagi's "Teshigoto No Nippon," there is this description:
"The hand differs from the machine in that it is always directly connected to the heart. Machines have no heart. I believe this is the reason why handwork works in mysterious ways. The hands do not just move, but there is always a mind at the back that creates things, gives pleasure to the work, and makes it moral. This is what gives an item its beautiful qualities. Therefore, it is fair to say that handicraft is a work of the heart."

Perhaps the reason for the beauty of these traditional and practical crafts made by human hands is that they are connected to people's lives, nature, and hearts at every age.

Okinawa Mingu's Getto Coaster
https://www.shokunin.com/en/okinawa/enza.html
Honma Kazuo Shoten's Straw Pot Stand
https://www.shokunin.com/en/honma/nabeshiki.html
Chushin Kobo's Cast Iron Pot Stand
https://www.shokunin.com/en/chushin/

References
https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/民具
https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/ゲットウ
https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/藁

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[Ancient Times]

Egypt, a country where 90% of the population is Muslim. Although the custom of drinking is not associated with wine, surprisingly, the source of modern winemaking, in which grape berries are pressed and only the liquid is fermented, is said to have originated in Ancient Egypt.

The tomb of Nakht, the scribe and astronomer of Thutmose IV, in Luxor, contains a beautiful mural describing the wine-making process. The arched, trellised vines, the grape picker, the person stepping on the grapes to press them and pour the juice into a stone vat next to it, and the person collecting the accumulated juice were all described in such detail that we could not believe that this was really 3,500 years old. The strained grape liquid was then placed in an amphora, an unglazed pot, to ferment, and the murals show this process.

It is amazing to think that the ancient Egyptians were already making and drinking wine using a brewing method that is no different from that used today. Many unglazed pot amphorae were displayed in the Archaeological Museum in Cairo as pots for transporting and storing the necessities of life.

Bizen Pottery, which is made without glaze, is also traditional, natural pottery with a thousand-year history. It is made by firing a kiln for 10 days and half a night with 10 tons of split red pine wood after molding with a potter's wheel after making clay from locally available clay. Ichiyougama's Wine Cup was created with the ancient wines of 8,000 years ago (wine made by fermenting whole white grapes in an unglazed pot called a qvevri), the origin of today's wines, in mind, and what kind of vessels they were drunk in.

We would like to pour natural wine, orange (amber) wine, or cider into the Bizen ware wine cup and think of the people who carefully made wine in ancient times.

Ichiyougama's Wine Cup
https://www.shokunin.com/en/ichiyou/wine.html

References
https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E3%83%AF%E3%82%A4%E3%83%B3%E3%81%AE%E6%AD%B4%E5%8F%B2
https://www.enoteca.co.jp/article/archives/1503/

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[Nikko's Sori Yanagi Bone China has been added]

Designed around 1952, the "Matsumura Ironstone China N Series" was widely distributed on the heels of the postwar prosperity of the Good Design Movement, and became one of Sori Yanagi's early masterpieces.

It was already discontinued in the 1980s, but Nikko reissued it in 1990, changing the material to bone china, which has a transparent beauty. It is still loved today as tableware representing postwar Japan.

Nikko's Sori Yanagi Bone China
https://www.shokunin.com/en/nikko/