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Archive for the ‘Kids’ Category

Paper for a Thousand Years…Vintage Chiyogami

Posted in Artist Spotlight, Ephemera, Interior Design, Kids, tagged , , , , on October 24, 2012 | 6 Comments »

Jenny’s post the other day on the great Warhol print she got for her little girls’ room reminded me of something – another kind of print – a vintage Japanese woodblock one called chiyogami, that looks a lot like her Warhol on a much smaller scale.

Chiyogami (chiyo meaning “a thousand years” or “through eternity” and kami/gami “paper”) has been made since the Edo era and continues to be popular today. Early papers, like these examples from the Taisho period between the wars were block printed much in the same way as traditional ukiyo-e. I think their bright colors and stylized prints, based originally on kimono fabric patterns, would look wonderful hung en masse in a child’s room. While based on traditional designs, these patterns skirt the edges of Art Nouveau and Art Deco.

Simple frames of the IKEA variety are one inexpensive and easy way to complete a wall display…

…while wrapping canvas stretchers is a bit more unusual. These are covered in modern chiyogami examples.

New chiyogami is available all over Japan and online at all the paper sites, but the new pieces are silkscreened or machine printed and don’t have quite the same feel. Maybe it’s because the patterns have become ubiquitous to me, but framed they look too much like scrapbook paper – one-dimensional with no heft to the paper. But actually, still pretty…

I love framing and hanging things that were never meant for that purpose.

Related Posts:
Hanga 101…a Quick Primer on Japanese Prints

Image credits: 1. via Little Green Notebook, 2-9. me, 10. via Style at Home, 11-12. via Apartment Therapy.

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Teenage Wasteland…Bringing Life to Bridget’s Bedroom

Posted in Expat Life, Furniture, Interior Design, Kids, Lighting, Rugs and Carpets, Shrine Sales and Flea Markets, Textiles, tagged , , , , , , on September 13, 2012 | 15 Comments »

Right now I am working on a really fun project, quite different from my usual style. It is a bedroom for a teenager with a strong sense of what she likes without knowing how to make it get that way. Rather than giving me a list of furniture or a design style, her inspiration photos, sourced by her on Tumblr, communicate emotion and personality – a distinct mood. Take a look….

What do these all have in common? A dreamy feel. Obviously little white sparkle lights, perhaps even with tiny lanterns are an absolute given, as is a collage wall of photos, ephemera and other goodies.  She is already at work collecting pictures and images she likes. The de-riguer Apple lap top which is a requirement for high school she already has. What these photos also have in common is what they don’t have, i.e. there is no significant or important furniture or art, which bodes well for the budget. On the other hand, the room needs to be more than just some sparkly white lights. It needs to be functional and practical and perhaps able to mature along with its owner.

The room itself is absolute Tokyo standard – small, with ugly off-white wallpaper and carpet and no interesting architectural features. Tracy the bear has to stay.

Her other dictates are also quite clear:

She loves bright pink.

She doesn’t like “Asian”.

And her mom’s dictates are clear too:

She needs the room to grow with her.

This needs to be done on a budget.

My additional inspiration photos for desk and orderly display include quite a bit of white and pink, containers for order, cute desk lamps and a mid-century modern chair. (From here, here, and here.)

Our resources here in Tokyo are limited, particularly on a budget. I know readers in the US and elsewhere think of Japan as a design mecca, but when it comes to reasonably sized furniture (as in not miniature) at reasonable prices, the selection here is very small. We have IKEA, shrine sales for an occasional find, IKEA, antique stores, IKEA, some sweet boutiques and mail order for accessories, and IKEA. We can’t paint or change anything and arguably can’t even put holes in the wall.

That she doesn’t love “Asian” can’t really go over well as that is one of our only pools of choice. I think it requires a bit of trickery – choosing things Japanese that she doesn’t consciously read as Japanese. For instance, one of the key pieces in the design is this hot pink shibori silk kimono obi for a window valence bought at a shrine sale. Quintessentially Japanese, but to her it reads as funky tie-dye. It has her pink and a soft accent of turquoise, which we will also be using.

IKEA, IKEA, IKEA

While an absolutely amazing resource, we don’t mean for the space to end up looking like one of the little sample rooms at the store. That being said, items from IKEA will be the backbone of the design, in particular this black and white Rand dhurrie rug.

We have pulled this living room photo as a working tool. The black and white rug grounds the pink and makes it more sophisticated and eclectic. It also allows for later changes and updates. My theory on these Rand rugs is that we should all buy one and put it away. Some day soon IKEA will stop making them and we will all be reminiscing about them for years.

The brand new issue of Lonny also had a perfect inspiration space for this project. Here the striped rug is actually a zig zag, but it has just the kind of bedding mix we want to put together – white background and pink and turquoise accents. Note the mid-century chair here too. (You need to look left and right here as it is the same room in this screen shot.)

For bedding ideas we can turn to the internet, especially since the sizes of local linens doesn’t match the US standard sizes, and order things to be sent to a friend’s house in the USA and shipped here. We will stop into some cute local design stores here that aren’t a fortune too, like Franc Franc and Afternoon Tea, for throw pillows and other accessories like desk lamps and organizers.

I am still on the hunt for the perfect duvet cover, but this Nile cover from West Elm on big sale for $24.99 might do. I’d really rather find something more like the Roberta Roller Rabbit duvet in the Lonny photo above.

We are all loving this long accent bolster from Pine Cone Hill.

Perhaps a splurge on a special elephant pillow from John Robshaw or Jonathan Adler. The choice depends on which way we swing the mood.

And we definitely plan to add some turquoise with either a quilt like these – the Amanda or Big Cata from Roberta Roller Rabbit…

…or a little turquoise trellis, quatrefoil or zig zag in a pillow or two, like this one from Urban Outfitters.

The desk and chair combo needs a little modern sleekness mixed with vintage style. Although the room could use a little brown wood to weight it and keep it from being too child-like, we’d take Carla Fahden‘s exact set-up as-is – vintage white wicker desk with hot pink bentwood chair and turquoise peanut lamp. The lamp is on sale at Pier One right now, so maybe we can order it along with the little white string lights and add it to our box coming from the US.

We are likely to look for a good mid-century desk that could travel with her to her adult life, like this one via Houzz. And I really continue to think the room needs some wood to warm it up…

There are plenty of vintage bentwood chairs at the shrine sales if we want to go that direction, whether in wood or painted pink!

Here’s a mid-century desk + plastic Eames type chair from a great Etsy shop – too bad they can’t ship to Japan.

We could use the IKEA Snille in white (or pink!) and shop Meguro-dori for a desk to get the look above…

We are planning on hunting up the more unique accessories at shrine sales in the coming weeks. I’ll let you know how this develops and hope to have a full reveal quite soon – teenage clients are very impatient!

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Summer Crafting…Paper Flowers and Paper Cuts

Posted in DIY, Ephemera, Kids, tagged , , , , on July 11, 2012 | 6 Comments »

One of the best things about our charming beach town is the plethora of activities available all summer. From the Junior Lifeguard program, library book clubs, drop in tennis clinics, sand castle contests, movies on the beach, and regular fireworks to the crafting workshops sponsored by the local Historical Society, there is always something for the kids to do on any given day at any given time. On Monday, the girls and I participated in a wonderful paper flowers class, run by teacher and artist Laura McHugh on the lawn at Centennial Cottage in town. It was a glorious day – mid 80s and dry.

We learned how to make a number of kinds of paper flowers, including my favorites, made from vintage book pages, scrap booking paper and any other interesting ephemera – such as maps – that we had available. Both luck and my subconscious steered me towards making flowers in the soft colors of my downstairs rooms, and I am dying to figure out a way to use or display the big group above. Ideas anyone?

The basic technique was easy. A square paper was folded in a triangle, then folded again into a smaller triangle, and then the corners were folded back on each side to make yet a smaller triangle. A petal shape was cut into the top open edge of the triangles and voila, a flower upon opening. See the quick video tutorial below for details. We also used some flower punches and press rollers, all available at local craft stores, for some of our flower shapes, but I prefer being creative with the hand cut ones.

We also made classic Mexican tissue paper flowers, which I hadn’t done since I was a kid. Talk about easy and big bang satisfying! Hours of rainy day fun but we have even been continuing on sunny days! Check out the video tutorial below.

Hey, Felt So Cute, she’s hot on your trail to make the best headband ever!

Laura has written a great post on the class  - featuring lots of photos of my kids and their handiwork – which also gives a sense of the charm of the town. Take a look at her blog Vintage2Glam. We can’t wait for her July 25th class on macrame!

Last summer we did a paper cutting workshop with Mindy Shapiro that is being offered again this summer on July 27. Some friends were visiting and we all had a blast. I think she has a new project for her class this year, so we may just have to do it again.

The full calendar of events is attached here. It includes everything from this workshop to crazy quilting classes.

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Shrine Sale Stories…Vintage Matchboxes, Frank Lloyd Wright’s Imperial Hotel and The 1948 London Olympics

Posted in Earthquake, Ephemera, History, Kids, Porcelain and Pottery, Shrine Sales and Flea Markets, tagged , , , , , , , on June 10, 2012 | 12 Comments »

Today was slim on the ground for shrine sales being the second Sunday of the month, but Tomioka Hachiman did not disappoint. It was a day full of friends from out-of-town and extraordinary porcelain, including a few cute and very atypical Japanese pieces bought for the beach house. The small green iris pickle dish will be perfect on the dresser or night table in the beach house guest room for holding jewelry and other trinkets.

It reminded me of the Korin Ogata screens and the garden at the Nezu Museum.

The small Imari-meets-lustreware dish has all the pretty colors in the downstairs rooms of the beach house. Don’t know how I’ll be using it – perhaps as part of a wall display, perhaps on a stack of books on the coffee table to hold olive and cherry pits.

But the person who had the most fun today was my elder daughter who happened upon a stall selling vintage matchbooks from the 1930s-1950s. We have often seen matchbox covers mounted on pages, but not often the entire matchboxes. The dealer had hundreds of them in three big boxes and she spent significant time sorting through them and putting together a charming collection which we plan to place in a shadow box frame. You’ll note her signature colors of lavender and blue.

The story comes as she was choosing her boxes. Much to her chagrin, another man came up behind and offered to buy zenbu – everything – from the dealer. It hadn’t occurred to us and we were immediately sad to see the entire collection go! Luckily, the dealer offered us a few as “service” gifts for making a purchase before he sold off the boxes. We managed to grab a few historical gems.

The first matchbox, dated 1939, features Frank Lloyd Wright’s famous Imperial Hotel, with its stylized logo on one side and Mt. Fuji and an early version of the Shinkansen (bullet train) on the other.

Finished in 1923, the hotel was one of Wright’s masterpieces, famously surviving the Great Kanto Earthquake that year, and in use as the premier Tokyo hotel until 1968 when it was deemed outdated and tragically torn down.

The other matchbox could not have been more timely, featuring the 1948 London Olympics on one side and the 1952 Helsinki Olympics on the other.

Wondering what they might fetch among collectors. Ebay maybe?

Image Credits:  Iris photo by Joseph Keating, via Atsuko & Joe, Imperial Hotel postcard via Old Tokyo, all other photos by me.

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A Little Bat Mitzvah Inspiration…Yoko Ono’s Wish Tree

Posted in Artist Spotlight, Design Motif, DIY, Ephemera, History, Kids, tagged , , , , , , , on April 17, 2012 | 8 Comments »

As a child in Japan, I used to go to a temple and write out a wish on a piece of thin paper and tie it around the branch of a tree. Trees in temple courtyards were always filled with people’s wish knots, which looked like white flowers blossoming from afar.”

Yoko Ono: “All My Works Are A Form Of Wishing”

Yoko Ono has picked up on and modernized a 2000 year old tradition called tanabata wherein people write their wishes on tanzaku (colorful, small strips of paper) and hang them on trees. These temple wishes can be seen throughout Japanese art history, from this circa 1675 byobu (screen) by Tosa Mitsuoki now held by the The Art Institute of Chicago, to this 1852 woodblock print by Hiroshige, from his Thirty-six Views of Mt. Fuji series.

Ono’s project, begun in 1996, is to have wish trees placed all over the world and those wishes for peace gathered together for her Imagine Peace Tower. From the courtyard of the Museum of Modern Art in New York City…

… to the United States Ambassador’s residence here in Tokyo. It was my first viewing of this wish tree that inspired me to do something similar for my daughter’s Bat Mitzvah. How about a wish tree for her, and while we were at it, why not have it be cherry blossoms, in tune with both the season and event?

As the idea progressed in my mind, I thought it would be lovely to actually have the tags be shaped like sakura blossoms. Unfortunately, no matter where I looked I could not find any already made and thus this became a DIY project. Luckily for me, the uber-talented Alisha of Felt So Cute had moved to Tokyo this year and become a great friend! She is a crafting maestro and has all the tools that go with the title including some kind of vinyl cutter called a Silhouette. She found a cherry blossom shape and set the program to cut out the blossoms from three shades of pink cardstock.

We used a pretty hemp twine to make the tie strings and put a sign (using our logo again) in a silver photo frame.

I used one of my antique Seto porcelain planters to hold the pot and bought some moss to cover the not-so-attractive soil.

Here’s what it looked like set up before the party.

And here is what it looked like about halfway through the evening.

So pretty!!

We are going to harvest the wishes tomorrow and plant the tree behind our house. I thought about sending them to Yoko, but we may just have to keep them for our scrapbook.

Related Posts:
A Little Bat Mitzvah Inspiration…Sakura Season in Japan

Image credits: 1. via The Art Institute of Chicago, 2. via Wikipedia, Dominique Browning, Slow Love Life, all other photos by me.

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A Little Bat Mitzvah Inspiration…Sakura Season in Japan

Posted in Color, Design Motif, DIY, Kids, tagged , , , , , , , , on April 16, 2012 | 24 Comments »

For the very first time in almost two years, I actually didn’t post for about ten days as this past Saturday was my elder daughter’s Bat Mitzvah. With 18 guests from the US, plus other friends who came in from Hong Kong and Singapore, all the last-minute party planning details and everything else going on, there simply wasn’t time. Since this event has been occupying so much of my attention for months, I thought it would be fun to share the party design details!

The theme of the party came quite easily. As springtime suggested sakura (cherry blossoms), my daughter’s favorite color is blue, she loves Japanese kamon (family crests) and the party would be held in the evening, we decided sakura at night would have just the right feel and that we would use a kamon in the party logo.

Lovely invitations from Karissa at Kiss and Tell Cards on Etsy were custom colored to navy and pink.

I had noticed that kids seem to love these cinch saks, using them for everything from their gym clothes to everyday bags. I also thought they would be perfect for carrying home any loot from the party. Using a classic Japanese sakura kamon (that also might masquerade as a soccer ball if the boys didn’t look too closely), the lovely Kristen Hager helped me create a logo for the party. Jeff Ward over at Rach Inc. supplied the bags and the printing and made the whole process easy, including shipping directly to me here in Tokyo.

We used the logo again on the cover of the program. Thanks to blogger Aimee Weinstein of Tokyo Writer for her help with that!

I had long had the idea of using traditional Japanese fabric for the yarmulkes, the traditional head covering worn by men in the synagogue. I had thought about sending them out to be made in Hong Kong by my seamstress, but we all know how long she took to make my quilt and obi throw pillows. In the end I found a company back in good old Brooklyn called Zion Judaica, bought and shipped the fabric to them and they shipped the finished product to my parents who then carried them over. I chose a simple indigo with scattered cherry blossoms, not wanting to worry about large-scale repeats and pattern matching.  It is also reminiscent of…

…petals floating by on the water or the wind.

As the things I ordered started to arrive, I loved the way they coordinated!

I ordered pink and blue M & Ms and bought small organza bags in the same colors for the candy toss. For the other old fogeys out there, this is a new tradition that didn’t exist when we were kids.

The amazingly talented George of PaperGlueBamboo painted dozens of paper lanterns for the table centerpieces. These tiny ones with battery operated votive candles we put inside were for the kids tables…

…while these larger andon shaped lanterns had real candles in them on the adult tables.

Lanterns lining the banks of the Meguro river are a staple of sakura season. We also had garlands of sakura draped on the two interior trees at the restaurant, but as it was raining, all the beautiful lanterns we had planned to hang in the trees on the outside terrace did not get used.

For the kids (and plenty of the adults who could not resist) there was very hard to get American candy favorites on the candy bar, all served in my vintage senbei canisters! You can see the rest of the pink and blue M & Ms made it there too, but the Swedish fish were the most popular!

My daughter loves the fabulous photo booths, called puri kura, that they have here in Japan, but we were not able to get one brought in to the restaurant. Luckily, the crafty Tai Dirkse of Darksea Studios created his own DIY photo booth. I spent weeks trying to figure out how to get a cherry blossom backdrop as custom ordering one was prohibitively expensive. I had started contemplating tearing down some giant advertising posters with sakura on them when I found these great cloth photo banners in Asakusa-bashi, the paper district. We strung two of them on a pole and voila, a perfect backdrop…

…for these adorable photo strips.

We are all still on a high from the party and I want to thank everyone who helped me make it possible!!

More details on a Yoko Ono inspired wish tree to come in a following post.

Special thanks to the talented writer and photographer Kit Namagura for the use of her sakura season photos!

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Photographic and Literary Connections…”Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children”

Posted in Books, Movies & TV, Ephemera, History, Kids, tagged , , , , , on March 11, 2012 | 1 Comment »

All the pictures in this book are authentic, vintage found photographs…lent from the personal archives of ten collectors, people who have spent years and countless hours hunting through giant bins of unsorted snapshots at flea markets and antiques malls and yard sales to find a transcendent few, rescuing images of historical significance and arresting beauty from obscurity – and, most likely, the dump. Their work is an unglamorous labor of love, and I think they are the unsung heroes of the photography world.

 - Ransom Riggs

So besides the fact that my daughter read this cover to cover, handed it to me and said “I don’t think you are going to get much sleep tonight,” and I didn’t, I can’t resist posting about yet another book recently read and incredibly personal to me. Like my post on The Hare With Amber Eyes last week, once again we have a story that is fueled by a box of items from the past, in this case a group of photos of “peculiar” children that Jacob grows up hearing stories about from his grandfather. As a young child he worshipped his grandfather – an orphaned war hero, the only one of his family to escape Poland before WWII –  and believed his stories to be true. Shipped to a children’s home in Wales to escape the “monsters,” where the sun shone everyday, he and his new friends had all kinds of special talents and he “proves” them to Jacob by showing him their photographs. Riggs has gathered a compelling collection of unusual vintage snapshots demonstrating these special powers and puts them to good use in his storytelling in upping the creepy atmospheric setting. This is definitely one book you can judge by its cover! And as the photographs are the lynchpin of the novel, I really recommend the hardcover book over the Kindle version.

But as age brings maturity and skepticism, Jacob ceases to believe that his grandfather’s stories are literal truths, “But these weren’t the kind of monsters that had tentacles and rotting skin, the kind a seven-year-old might be able to wrap his mind around – they were monsters with human faces, in crisp uniforms, marching in lockstep…Like the monsters, the enchanted-island story was also a truth in disguise. Compared to the horrors of mainland Europe, then children’s home that had taken in my grandfather must’ve seemed like a paradise, and so in his stories had become one: a safe haven of endless summers and guardian angels and magical children…” Without spoiling any of the surprise I think it is safe to say that the stories actually turn out to be true, but it in no way lessens Jacob’s own analogy with the horrors of WWII, and that is what makes the book eminently readable on more than one level, suitable for older kids, teens and adults.

Obviously for me, in addition to the story, the collecting of vintage photographs and other ephemera is dear to my heart and I have written about it before, particularly here. My newest fantasy is that Ransom Riggs decides to layer in the war in the Pacific to his story – after all, the Japanese were major players in the war too – and needs someone to scour the shrine sales of Tokyo for appropriate photographic material. I figure I have passed up plenty of peculiar children in my time and I’d love to give them an eternal home…

And by the way, from what I hear, we will all have a chance to see Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children soon at a theater nearby. Tim Burton has signed on to direct – an absolutely perfect choice!

Related Posts:
Windows into an Earlier World…Photos from the Past and “A Town Like Alice”

Image credits: 1. Ransom Riggs, 2-3. via Amazon, 4. me.

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Back in Business…The Higuchis Unveil Their Newly Rebuilt Studio

Posted in Artist Spotlight, Earthquake, Gardens, Glass, Kids, tagged , , , , , , , on November 17, 2011 | 4 Comments »

While Dalia was off visiting the Mashiko Pottery Festival last week and checking on post-earthquake progress there, I was busy visiting Kimiake and Shin-ichi Higuchi, two of the world’s foremost Pâte de Verre glass artists up at their newly rebuilt studio at the northern end of Nikko National Park. As you might recall from a previous post, much of the Higuchis’ studio and about 40% of their artwork had been destroyed in the Great East Japan Earthquake. The weekend of November 5-6 was their joyous open house – a celebration of their rebuilding and faith in going forward – and we were lucky enough to be invited. Ironically, they had set up their entire exhibit by Thursday afternoon the 3rd, only for there to be a fairly strong quake that evening, which many of my local readers will remember. For safety, they took everything back down and only put it in place just before the weekend open house.

Simple linked buildings flooded with light house their bedroom, living quarters and studio, all surrounding their gorgeous garden which is the main source of inspiration for their work as well as much of their actual food. Upon arrival we were greeted by giant cabbage leaves spread about the grass. They were so life-like, we weren’t sure if they were glass or not!

Everything in the studio was back to being ship-shape and orderly. The rows and bins of glass powders and frits were a modern installation all their own. In the spirit of recycling, all the broken glass works are being ground down and re-used.

We got to see their process from sketch…

…to detail demonstration…

…to finished installation.

Their renderings of the everyday vegetables and flowers around them are so life-like as to almost be surreal. The asparagus looked so delicious that I was ready to pick it up and eat it.

The bearded irises were amazing.

Color and detail, here on a cyclamen panel…

…and here on a trumpet vine.

The little boxes and vessels made me swoon – I wanted this little sakura box…

…or the wisteria.

Some boxes had secret surprises inside.

Can you see the snail and the water droplet on the hydrangea leaf?

I don’t often include pictures of my kids on the blog, but here she provides a sense of scale. Keep in mind she just turned 8. Largest glass cabbage known to man – perhaps the original was the largest ever grown too.

Speaking of the girls, the younger ones had a ball catching praying mantids in the garden. They strongly suggested that Shin-ichi remake his praying mantis sculpture which had been broken in the earthquake.

And the pièce de résistance, which I cannot resist showing is this…

…their bathroom counter, covered in glass roses, and even including clear glass water drops and a few small insects.

Warm thanks to the Higuchis for hosting us and to Debra for introducing us!!

The previous week, Keiko Iishi, a former assistant to the Higuchis during a Corning Museum of Glass education program and a glass blowing artist in her own right, held a charming solo exhibit in a small Ginza gallery. She had been so disheartened by the loss of family and friends in the earthquake and subsequent tsunami that she had planned to cancel this long-awaited show. With strong encouragement from her supporters, she decided to go forward and it was a treat of color and pattern.

Having just made butterbeer with my elder daughter and her friends, the piece in the center rear, entitled “Honeydukes,” caught my eye. Keiko, a huge Harry Potter fan, said I was one of the only ones to get the reference.

Congratulations to Keiko on a very successful exhibition!

The net result of viewing all this modern glass art? I think we might need to sign up for classes at Hot Sand on the Asbury Park boardwalk this summer.

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Magic in the Finding…Geocaching, Miniature Worlds, Fishing Floats and Paper Sculptures

Posted in Artist Spotlight, Ephemera, Expat Life, Glass, Kids, tagged , , , , , , , , on October 5, 2011 | 13 Comments »

Making sense of the misty ideas floating around my head can be hard, so I will do my best to make this post intelligible.  So much of what this blog is about and what I truly love is the hunt, the surprise, the excitement of a found object, a piece of art, or a moment or item of beauty in a place least expected. Along those lines it is no surprise that my family, led by my girls, but with the mantle well taken up by me, has become addicted to geocaching. If you haven’t heard of it, geocaching is an outdoor hobby in which the participants use a Global Positioning System receiver and other navigational techniques to hide and seek containers, called “geocaches” or “caches”, anywhere in the world (thanks Wikipedia). When you find a cache, you leave a tiny gift inside and choose one to take that has been left there previously. Sometimes there is even a special trackable item with a mission such as “travel around the globe” and the job of the finder is to move that item onwards in its journey. For the kids, the math, geography and the actual search are challenging and fun, but for me it is truly that eureka(!) moment that makes it so irresistible. The whole idea of it is like a net that binds a mass of strangers together, almost a form of performance art. We had just started in New Jersey this summer, but now have been working our way through our neighborhood here in Tokyo as well as further afield. I feel like I need to add it as a tip to my post on antiquing with kids – or actually just as plain old parenting advice. Add a geocache site to your day and it will keep any child happy doing even boring errands.

We are making sure to addict our friends too as there is no fun in going it alone. Recently, one of those friends whom we introduced to geocaching and who also happens to be from Corning, NY, glass capital of the world, introduced a glass artist to me - Josh Simpson - who makes tiny miniature worlds and then leaves them places for people to stumble upon, whether it be in a few weeks or hundreds of years. Josh writes, “In 1976 I discovered several handmade marbles outside my kitchen door. Probably left there by children a generation before, they were still just as bright and colorful as they were on the summer afternoon they were lost.” His fascination with them led him to begin his Infinity Project, making and hiding tiny glass worlds and then, through the help of a few thousand volunteers, hiding them all over the world. “I hope future archaeologists will be confused about the meaning and purpose of the little spheres, wondering what they are and how they got there.”

Simpson’s website is full of photos of these amazing worlds, some tiny and some very large. My kids think they are amazing and love to study them and make comparisons with our own planet. My littlest one even kind of believes there are tiny little people in them and asks if it is possible that we are really in a glass sculpture and don’t know it. Simpson says, ”the cores of Planets are full of bubbles, threads, and kaleidoscopic patterns evoking unseen landscapes and underwater worlds. I know I’ve succeeded when you feel like you have to look closer at one of my little worlds and then lose yourself in its textures and color.”

One of my favorite photos from his site shows the glass canes that must get embedded in the globes (forgive me if I am completely wrong about that technique). I find them very mysterious….What do you see when you look at them? (I see coral reefs).

Hunting for glass balls is something we are already very familiar with as we are also perpetually on the lookout for old Japanese glass fishing floats. My elder daughter has taken to this one in particular, learning the marks and history and begging to drive nine hours north to the tip of Japan for our vacation in order to look for them on the beaches there. Last weekend, we went out searching with friends as part of a jaunt along the nearby coast, only to discover a few beloved ”lucky” floats that no fishermen were willing to part with. Nonetheless, just finding things has a magic of its own.

Exploring by flashlight was quite exciting.

Our actual haul to date has been pretty good – this isn’t even all we have found. Like any enthusiasts, glass float collectors talk lovingly about bubbles, swirls and spindles. Rare marks and shapes are all the more collectible. Give her a minute and my daughter will be happy to talk your ear off.

Another friend turned me on the annual “Finders Keepers” event in Lincoln City, Oregon, in which local artists hand blow and hide roughly 2000 floats along the beach every winter for people to discover. It has become a huge tourist attraction that pulls folks in and gets them to tour the art galleries as well as hunt on the beach. Again, like Simpson’s tiny glass worlds, this is art that allows the viewer to participate in such that they become part of it.

Late this summer there was also a special glass drop in which 200 small antique Japanese glass floats were planted along the Lincoln City beaches. Won’t mention that to my daughter…

But perhaps the most unusual found items of late are these extraordinary and minutely detailed paper sculptures being anonymously left at numerous Scottish libraries. Each one is absolutely amazing in both its construction and wittiness, but it is a complete mystery as to who has been making them. I cannot resist showing them all, in the order they have been found, but for more information on the story and wonderful close-ups see Txikito Planet.

The tag on the first one left at the Scottish Poetry Library in March read:
It started with your name @byleaveswelive and became a tree.…
… We know that a library is so much more than a building full of books… a book is so much more than pages full of words.…
This is for you in support of libraries, books, words, ideas….. a gesture (poetic maybe?)

Next up was this gramophone over a coffin deposited at the National Library of Scotland:
For @natlibscot – A gift in support of libraries, books, words, ideas….. (& against their exit)

The third was found at the Filmhouse theater:
For @filmhouse – A gift in support of libraries, books, words, ideas….. and all things *magic*

I thought the one left at the Scottish Storytelling Centre was my favorite. The tag reads:
For @scotstorycenter – A gift in support of libraries, books, works, ideas….. Once upon a time there was a book and in the book was a nest and in the nest was an egg and in the egg was a dragon and in the dragon was a story…..

But in sentiment it may have been replaced by this one appearing at the Edinburgh International Book Festival which reads “Nothing beats a nice cup of tea (or coffee) and a really good BOOK, except maybe a cake as well“. The attached tag:
To @edbookfest ‘A gift’ This is for you in support of libraries, books, words, ideas…… & festivals xx

This one also appeared at the festival with the following tag:
To @edincityoflit ‘A gift’ LOST (albeit in a good book) This is for you in support of libraries, books, words, ideas…. “No infant has the power of deciding….. by what circumstances (they) shall be surrounded.. Robert Owen

The final one I have seen appeared at the Central Lending Library at the end of August.
For Central Library ‘A Gift’ @Edinburgh_CC This is for you in support of libraries, books, words, ideas…. LIBRARIES ARE EXPANSIVE. Note the letter change in the last word.

In late September the mystery was solved, with the Edinburgh News taking a poll as to whether or not to reveal the artist’s name. As far as I know, it is still not public knowledge. I think it is more fun to keep the mystery alive!

As for us, my girls are hoping to convince Josh Simpson that we should be the next participants in his Infinity Project. They want to hide one of his tiny worlds in a geocache and give it an assignment in the hopes that fellow geocachers will carry it from place to place, creating a traveling art exhibition of one.

Image credits: 1. G. Fukuda via Instagram, 2. Hector Rodriguez via Josh Simpson, 3-4. Josh Simpson, 5-7 & 9. me, 8. via oregon.com, 10-16. chrisdonia via Txikito Planet

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The Porcelain is Alright (Kids Too)…My Tale of the Big Japan Earthquake

Posted in Earthquake, Expat Life, Kids, Porcelain and Pottery, tagged , , , on March 12, 2011 | 46 Comments »

Humour might not be appropriate right now, but sometimes it is all you’ve got. As I type this, another aftershock reverberates through the house, smaller that the 30 or so full-sized earthquake ones that continued yesterday afternoon and evening in the wake of the 8.9 epic earthquake off the coast of Sendai. I feel like I am in limbo. All here in Tokyo is well with my family and friends, but not so up along the north coast of Japan.

My personal experience was terrifying.  When you have lived here as long as I have (almost 7 years now), you have experienced many earthquakes. They are always scary, but this one was different.  All of my family was scattered, fairly far and wide. I had made a spur of the moment decision, about 40 minutes before the quake, to drive to the mall at Odaiba, an American style mall with a Toy “R” Us built on a small landfill island in Tokyo Bay. My cellphone battery was low so I didn’t call to tell anyone where I was going. I parked up on the 5th floor of the parking structure and went inside. Just as I got there, people began streaming out of the store, clutching their children. At first I thought something crazy was happening inside, but then quickly realized my mistake.  We all fled from the building out to the roadway along the small beach while the quake finished. The ground shook so I could barely stand up or keep my balance. I felt that the sidewalk beneath my feet was made of shifting sand. As the daughter of a water/ground systems/structural engineer and I know that man-made land can basically liquefy in an earthquake.  During the great Kobe earthquake of 1995, the landfill islands around Kobe sunk. And the noise! Everything even sightly unsecured joined in the cacaphony…

After the first earthquake, waves of others began coming. And then the tsunami alarms went off, advising people to seek higher ground. Well, there simply is no higher ground in Obaiba - it is about a mile square – surrounded by water on all sides. I did not know yet that the epicenter was in Sendai, I just knew that I was on the flattest, most vulnerable piece of land in all of Tokyo and that nobody knew I was there! I don’t know why dying alone seems so much scarier than dying with the people you love around you, but it does. Odaiba is linked by a giant suspension bridge (think Verrazano or Golden Gate) to the mainland and I could see that cars were still moving briskly across it. I couldn’t bear to stay where I was. They were not prohibiting people from re-entering the building, simply from using the elevators, so I ran up the five flights of stairs and tore down the ramp of the garage. I had met a Canadian man and his Japanese girlfriend while waiting and they wanted to go with me, so they jumped in the car and we drove across the bridge. Once we were on the other side, it was not even 10 minutes to home and I could have walked if necessary. I think if I had not left so quickly, I would have been stuck there all night!

Gathering my chicks was the next step, although I had been sustained through my ordeal by knowing they were in safer places than I. While cell phones were not working at all, the land lines at home were and I was finally able to speak with my husband, safe on the still swaying 25th floor of the brand new Marunouchi Trust Building. All new construction in Tokyo is built on rollers so that the buildings can move with an earthquake. My husband said looking out the window he could see all the buildings swaying, like trees in the wind. My younger daughter was on a playdate with a friend in the park when it happened and they quickly went home. But my older daughter was out at school, normally a 45 minute ride on the school bus. The quake had hit about 15 minutes before dismissal, and the school’s excellent emergency procedures clicked quickly into place. Around 4:30 they sent the buses out, driving on local roads, as the highways were all closed. The traffic was basically at a standstill and she did not get home until after 12:30, exhausted, but in good spirits.

Our damage at home was minimal. The fish tank overflowed everywhere, trashing my new Mac laptop, but worse (in the eyes of the children at least), sweeping our newest family member, the rainbow guppie named WW by our guests last week, to an early demise. Things were thrown around the house and quite a few regular dishes and glasses broke in the cupboards, but not a single piece of antique porcelain was broken. My beloved blanc de chine was toppled and tossed about, but is all intact.

Blue and white porcelain rattled to the edge, but did not go over…

For those of you who have been reading this blog for a while, you know it is a blog about stuff, and while it may seem silly to write about material goods which are not intrinsically important, they do bind us to our own histories and lives. I would have been crushed had the porcelain all been broken instead of the computer, although that having been said, a computer can contain an irreplaceable history of photographs and correspondence. In my case, it was new and relatively unused. For those most affected by the quake and tsunami, the loss of their belongings and connections must be devastating, even while they are grateful for their lives, as not all were so lucky. In that spirit, I encourage everyone to make a donation towards rebuilding. An easy way is to go online to the Red Cross and donate directly to the International Disaster Relief Fund. Personally, I am so thankful for the wishes and prayers that have poured in from friends, family and readers all over.

Ironically, devastation is not limited to big events like these.  While we are fine here, the very same day there was a huge fire up the street from us in our beloved beach town Ocean Grove, where we have been renovating and furnishing an 1880s Victorian that I have been chronicling on the blog. Our dearest friends there have lost their home, as have numerous others.

So my rebuilding efforts and my heart are split in two directions…

Photo of fire in Ocean Grove from Asbury Park Press, photo credit: James J. Connolly.

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