I strongly believe Japanese lacquer is the most luxurious finish. I don’t think any artificial material can reproduce the richness of it. Europeans invented a finish called “Japanning” in the…
Kaiseki food, tea ceremony sweets and incense are accessible and can be enjoyed by people who don’t practise tea ceremony. People often don’t even know they are associated with tea…
You may associate Japanese traditional culture with simplicity: zen or wabi-sabi. Zen is a philosophy of Buddhism and wabi-sabi is a principle of tea ceremony which sprang up from Zen,…
Having walked around and been lost in Kyoto for a few years, I started to see where Biden should be going. I may be able to edit designs, but was…
The avant-garde kimono designer, Jotaro Saito, also pioneered to make kimono fabrics in universal 140cm width, breaking a tradition of hundreds of years. A roll of kimono and obi sash…
All workshops which I have visited for sourcing were established some generations ago. They normally continue thanks to the hereditary system; eldest sons must take over. It was surely the…
My quest continued in Kyoto and I was desperate to find interior accessories which complement the existing collection. It can not be a one-off creation, either. Also, I realised the…
Amongst all the workshops and showrooms I visited for sourcing in Kyoto, the Kayatama Bunzaburo shop was particularly charming. It is a traditional house which was converted to a shop. …
Visiting workshops in Kyoto is an adventure itself. You may think it is easy to find a way in Kyoto as the major streets are laid out in a grid. …
My passion with Biden Designs is to discover and develop designs and ideas evolved by artisans who remain loyal to traditional techniques passed from generation to generation. My sourcing started…