The white is not paint. It is shell, ground fine and laid on ten times over.
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.
The body is moulded from paulownia sawdust bound with paste, then dried hard.
Ground shell white, bound with hide glue, brushed on thin — ten coats or more.
Each coat is burnished back before the next goes on. This is where the skin comes from.
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.
Pieces are found one at a time, in Japan, and photographed before they are listed. Tell us what you are looking for, and we will write when something arrives that answers it.
We write when there is something to write about — some months twice, some months not at all.
Noted. We will write when something arrives.