焔Maison HomuraShop
1835
三 · Wood — Kanazawa, Ishikawa

Kaga dolls

The white is not paint. It is shell, ground fine and laid on ten times over.

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Kaga dolls — Kanazawa, Ishikawa
Kanazawa, Ishikawa · Edo period onward

Kanazawa was the seat of the Maeda, who held the largest domain in Japan after the Tokugawa themselves. A house with that much rice behind it did not need its craftsmen to be quick, and Kanazawa still shows it: gold leaf, Kutani porcelain, Kaga yūzen, and these dolls.

The body is not carved. Paulownia is milled to sawdust, bound with paste into tōso, and pressed in a mould — a material that holds a fine edge and does not split with the seasons the way a carved block will.

Kaga dolls — from the left
From the left

None on the shelf right now. We find these one at a time. Leave your email and we will write the day a Kaga doll arrives — nothing else.

On the shelf now, from other workshops

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  3. It ships from Japan.

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Kaga dolls — at the workshop
At the workshop
How it is made
  1. 桐塑Tōso

    The body is moulded from paulownia sawdust bound with paste, then dried hard.

  2. 胡粉塗りGofun-nuri

    Ground shell white, bound with hide glue, brushed on thin — ten coats or more.

  3. 研ぎ出しTogidashi

    Each coat is burnished back before the next goes on. This is where the skin comes from.

  4. 面相Mensō

    The face is drawn last, with a brush of a few hairs.

Then the white. Gofun is shell, ground to powder and mixed with hide glue, and it goes on thin: ten coats, often more, each one burnished back before the next. That is why the face has depth instead of a surface, and why it holds light the way skin does rather than the way paint does.

The subjects are almost always children — at play, mid-gesture, caught doing something. This one holds a lion head from the Kaga lion dance, which in Kanazawa is not a procession but a fight: a staff-bearer squares up to the lion and the two of them go at it in the street.

The face is drawn last, with a brush of a few hairs, and it decides whether the whole thing was worth making.

Kaga dolls — from the right
From the right
Walk around it
Kaga dolls — FrontKaga dolls — LeftKaga dolls — BackKaga dolls — Right
Notes
Body
Tōso — paulownia sawdust and paste, moulded
White
Gofun — ground shell in hide glue, ten coats or more
Between coats
Burnished back, every time
Subject
Children, almost always
Why Kanazawa
Maeda patronage — the largest domain after the Tokugawa
About the place
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