STORY

Materials

Cherry Bark

Cherry bark is an eco-friendly material as it will regrow after being harvested. Cherry bark ware mainly have two different kinds of finishes: the one is Marble, that retains the appearance of the raw bark ; the other is Natural, whose surface is thinly scraped to a polish. The surfaces of tea caddies will grow more lustrous the more you handle them.

Harvest

The cherry bark is harvested between August and September in the mountains of the northern area of Japan because the trees contain a generous quantity of water. Thus the professional experts can cleanly peeled away from the trunk. And it has been dried naturally for about two years. Even after the cherry bark has been harvested from a tree, if the total amount of harvesting is under one third of the entire tree, the bark regrows.

Finish

Marble is the raw bark with gray-brown color. Only fine raw bark can be used for it, thus it is precious. The raw bark becomes reddish brown color by whittling, and then polishing it to a high shine, called Natural. To transform wild cherry bark into the craft material “Marble” and “Natural”, which we use in our collections, the craftsman whittles and polishes each sheet of bark by hand.

Technique

“Katamono”, “Kijimono”, and “Tatamimono” techniques are used for crafting cherry bark ware.

Katamono

This technique is used to make cylinders for tea caddies. The craftsman glues together layers of cherry bark and wood. He then wraps them around a cylindrical wooden mold and irons them with a highly heated trowel to attach them.
As all the parts of a tea caddy are made from one cylinder, thus it has a high airtightness, and will protect tea leaves from moisture.

Kijimono

This is the technique used to make boxes or rectangular shaped items like trays and tea chests. It is performed by using a highly heated trowel to press the layers of cherry bark and wood onto a wooden base.
In our collections, the Aiita and Subako series items are created using this technique.

Tatamimono

This technique is used to carve preassembled layers of polished cherry bark into all sorts of shapes. Each shape is carved so as to highlight all of the beautiful layers. It is then polished to an extremely high degree, which showcases the original luster of the cherry bark. Pieces created in this way are used as the inner lid handles of high quality tea caddies, or in jewelry.

Origin

Kakunodate, which once flourished as a castle town for the branch clan of Akita Domain, is a town with a long history. You can feel the beautiful cycle of the seasons such as cherry blossoms in spring, green maples in summer, colored leaves in autumn, and the contrast between the white snow and the black walls of Samurai residences in winter.

Hinokinai River

A 2km long row of cherry trees bloom along the Hinokinai River in spring. This place is designated as a place of scenic beauty, and is one of the symbols of Kakunodate, together with its samurai residences.

Densho-kan

The museum was opened in 1978 to promote the true values of the national traditional craft that is cherry bark ware. It exhibits historical documents, collections, and demonstrations of craftsmanship.