Bamboo

This is another relentlessly present subject in the catalog, with 265 examples. Every day I am astonished by the intimate and persistent relationship in Japan between nature and design. It is safe to say that I do not own a single garment decorated with plants from my region. Bamboo appears in the objects built from the plant; tables and lumber, court screens and more. When paired with cherry and pine, the trio becomes a symbol of the attributes of women in the “three friends of winter”. Bamboo offers the most dubious distinction in “bends but does not break.” And yet, the collection shows bamboo growing wild by streams, as dense forest, generated when a notch is added to simple stripe mimicking the stalk. I’ve set forth a few dozen examples for this show. To find more, search the catalog.