Suruga Bamboo Basketry Vase | Breeze

Suruga Japanese Bamboo Basketry - Breeze

When you look at it, really observe, you can see what skilled, patient hands have made:  Thin elegant lines crisscrossed; rounded strips arched into soft curves; diamond spaces filled with light. These are the the beautiful and distinctive features of Suruga Bamboo Basketry - Breeze.

What is Suruga Bamboo Basketry?

Suruga Bamboo Basketry is a traditional bamboo craftArt that even today, despite its more than 400 years history, has an amazingly contemporary form and design due to its open, airy weave. Though many Japanese baskety crafts styles require flat bamboo strips, unique to Suruga basketry is the use instead of thin, rounded strips that bend to form the wavy, rounded curves and create the delicate airy look that define the style. In 1976, the Japanese Ministry of International Trade and Industry, acknowledging the historical and cultural significance of Suruga Basketry, formally designated it as a National Traditional Craft of Japan.

Why is Suruga Bamboo Basketry so Special?

Producing the many rounded strips required for Suruga style Japanese basketry is a time consuming process. And, though bamboo is quite strong and robust, creating such fine, thin strips without damage, and with consistency, is challenging. The Craft process starts with the large bamboo culm which is dried.  The culms are then stripped of outer layers and then cut by knife and hatchet into workable sizes.  The fine, thin bamboo strips are created by hand in a lengthy process that requires the craftartist to further cut them and shave them in several iterations.  This produces a thin, yet still rectangular strip. In the final step of the thinning process, tens of, even hundreds of rectangular strips are then pulled, one by one, through a metal drawplate containing round and successively smaller holes.  By pulling the strips through these many holes the strips are thinned to as little as 0.8mm (0.3 inches) in diameter.  

Using these fine strips the craftArtists then bends and carefully coaxes and encourages them into place to form the signature diamond spaces and create the breezy, airy form.  The skill required to create such objects is not easily won and often takes the craftArtist many years of training - sometimes up to a decade or more - to acquire the skill.

Product Details/Care: 

Due to the nature of the high-end, craft making processes of our craft artists, individual products may contain some variations in color and in other qualities from product to product, and from the digital photos on our website. Includes a gift box.

Size: Approximately width 11.5cm × depth 11.5cm × height 18.7cm. 

Includes:  Cylinder for water made of black resin

Care:  Dust with a soft brush and/or wipe gently with a damp cloth. The lovely, glossy-tone color of quality bamboo products increases as it ages naturally.