【 The Concept 】
In the mountain villages where this figure was made, the winters lasted six months and the trees grew slowly. The woodworkers who lived there turned timber on a lathe all year — bowls, trays, cups — and in the quiet months they turned children. Not real ones. Wooden ones. A round head on a cylindrical body, painted with a face and a pattern, and given to a child or a visitor as proof that something beautiful could come out of a place that was frozen half the time. This one stands twenty-six and a half centimeters tall. The body is covered in chrysanthemums. The face is calm. It has been standing like this longer than most things last.
【 The Function 】
A turned wooden figure. Twenty-six and a half centimeters tall, six and a half centimeters in diameter, carved from a single species of white hardwood on a lathe. The head sits on the body. The body is straight with a slight inward curve at the center and a gentle flare at the base. The face is painted in ink — thin eyebrows, single-line eyes, a small red mouth. The hair is black, parted and tied with a red band. The body is wrapped in layered chrysanthemums painted in red, black, and green. At 485 grams it is the heaviest specimen in the archive.
【 The Texture 】
Turned hardwood, uncoated or lightly finished to preserve the natural grain. The surface is smooth and cool — closer to ivory than lumber. The white of the wood is not paint. It is the tree itself, dried for a year before it was cut. The chrysanthemums are painted directly onto this white surface in quick, confident strokes — each petal a single motion of the brush, no corrections, no second pass. The red is deep. The black is sharp. The green sits between the petals like shadow between leaves. Horizontal lathe lines ring the top and bottom of the body in red and green — evidence of the spinning that shaped it. The base is flat and unfinished.
【 Presence 】
It is the tallest and heaviest object in the archive. It stands the way a candle stands — still, vertical, and impossible to ignore. The face does not smile and does not frown. It watches the room from wherever you place it with an expression that has not changed since the brush left the wood. The chrysanthemums wrap the body like a second skin. They do not fade. They do not repeat. Every petal was painted once, by one hand, on one afternoon, and has stayed exactly where it was put.
Sourced from a private collection in northern Japan. Accompanied by its original presentation box.
【 The Concept 】
In the mountain villages where this figure was made, the winters lasted six months and the trees grew slowly. The woodworkers who lived there turned timber on a lathe all year — bowls, trays, cups — and in the quiet months they turned children. Not real ones. Wooden ones. A round head on a cylindrical body, painted with a face and a pattern, and given to a child or a visitor as proof that something beautiful could come out of a place that was frozen half the time. This one stands twenty-six and a half centimeters tall. The body is covered in chrysanthemums. The face is calm. It has been standing like this longer than most things last.
【 The Function 】
A turned wooden figure. Twenty-six and a half centimeters tall, six and a half centimeters in diameter, carved from a single species of white hardwood on a lathe. The head sits on the body. The body is straight with a slight inward curve at the center and a gentle flare at the base. The face is painted in ink — thin eyebrows, single-line eyes, a small red mouth. The hair is black, parted and tied with a red band. The body is wrapped in layered chrysanthemums painted in red, black, and green. At 485 grams it is the heaviest specimen in the archive.
【 The Texture 】
Turned hardwood, uncoated or lightly finished to preserve the natural grain. The surface is smooth and cool — closer to ivory than lumber. The white of the wood is not paint. It is the tree itself, dried for a year before it was cut. The chrysanthemums are painted directly onto this white surface in quick, confident strokes — each petal a single motion of the brush, no corrections, no second pass. The red is deep. The black is sharp. The green sits between the petals like shadow between leaves. Horizontal lathe lines ring the top and bottom of the body in red and green — evidence of the spinning that shaped it. The base is flat and unfinished.
【 Presence 】
It is the tallest and heaviest object in the archive. It stands the way a candle stands — still, vertical, and impossible to ignore. The face does not smile and does not frown. It watches the room from wherever you place it with an expression that has not changed since the brush left the wood. The chrysanthemums wrap the body like a second skin. They do not fade. They do not repeat. Every petal was painted once, by one hand, on one afternoon, and has stayed exactly where it was put.
Sourced from a private collection in northern Japan. Accompanied by its original presentation box.
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