Wood vessels by Nakaya Yoshitaka: The Legacy of a Tree

Wood Nakaya Yoshitaka

Woodwork by Nakaya Yoshitaka in our shop ->

Woodworker Nakaya Yoshitaka resides in the sprawling foothills of Mt. Fuji in Shizuoka prefecture. Much of the wood he uses is obtained locally, often from families that needed to fell trees on their properties for safety or other reasons.

These trees often have significant meaning for the homeowners because their ancestors may have planted them or they may have played on them when they were children. Nakaya-san feels that by making vessels out of this wood, he is ensuring that the legacy of these trees live on.

Chestnut plate by woodworker Nakaya Yoshitaka
Japanese oak bowl by Nakaya Yoshitaka

Nakaya-san’s wood vessels are shaped before the wood is completely dry and allowed to shrink and warp to provide their distinctive curves. The foot is created after the wood is thoroughly dried to make a leveled bottom. By creating vessels in this way, Nakaya-san thinks that he is letting the wood to speak, and decide the shape that it wants to be.

New work by Kazu Oba, and the Story of Myoga, the Japanese Ginger

Ceramics Kazu Oba Food and Craft

Ceramics by Kazu Oba in our shop ->

Looking back, I realize there were so many things that I disliked eating when I was a child. One of my arch enemies was myoga, the flower buds of Japanese ginger that appeared regularly at the dinner table in the summer and did not go away until October.

Myoga, Japanese ginger

Just like green onions, myoga was served as a garnish in miso soup, cold tofu, and other delicious things that, to a child’s tongue, tasted far better without this cursed topping. These terrible condiments are called yakumi, which means medicinal garnish, and my dream was to move to a world where they served food without them.

The other problem with myoga was that it was also the motif of my family’s crest. When I discovered this fact, I was so disappointed that I wasn’t born into a family with beautiful flower crests like Wisteria or Paulownia. I mean, why a lowly vegetable?

Family crest on my kimono, daki-myoga. The Japanese ginger motif.

Years have passed and now a cold tofu without yakumi would be a let-down at the dinner table. And I even rather like the fact that a hardy shade-loving Zingiber is the motif of my family’s crest.

Cold tofu served with myoga and green onions in a bowl by Kazu Oba