Journal

Beginning this month, at wagumi we have a special collection of items from Ehime.  This is under the title Ehi-merry Christmas.  At the end of 2020, when much has gone wrong, we would humble submit that this just the kind of thing we need.     Ehime, the pearl of the Japanese inland sea.  A sunny place, it is on the northwest corner of the Shikoku island, facing Hiroshima to the north.   In addition to its happy geography, it is somewhere renowned for fine things.  Most immediately, what comes to mind for many Japanese people is citrus fruit.  This...

It is again this season, after an extremely strange year.  For all that has happened, we hope somehow that it can finish on a relative high. At wagumi, we are still here, and ready to support you for any gift giving needs. We are open again in the Oxo Tower, and continue to complete all online orders.  We are  now offering two shipping options: the postal service and UPS.  There is also complementary gift wrapping, which you can select at check out - and the option to add messages or special requests via the notes section.  Click and collect is...

This month at wagumi we have a new collection work by Marumi Kujirai. A ceramist based in Kasama, not far north of Tokyo, her work has a special individuality. When the bubble economy collapsed in Japan in the 1990s, it was followed by a period in which craft and other less ostentatious aspects of life, experienced a revival.  Part of this was an emerging ‘indie’ scene in ceramics.   Many individual or small producers working in their own style and selling through fairs, and a growing network of independent shops.  In contrast to the garish materialism of the 1980s, owning hand...

This month at wagumi we have a rare restock of glass by Seiten. You can see the full collection here. In Yomitan, a settlement famous for craft on the southern Okinawan islands, is the glass studio of Kiyoharu Matsuda. Matsuda is leading practitioner in ‘saisei’ glass.  Literally meaning ‘reborn’, saisei in a glass context refers to a process to melt and recreate empty drinks bottles into beautiful forms.  Heavy ramune bottles are sometimes a material, as are others used to drink soft drinks in the island’s hot climate.  Reduced to fragments, the glass is blended for texture and colour, and...