Tour to discover the charm part2
It is continuation from part1.
We’ve visited the Inden store, where they
also had a museum on the second floor. We were privileged to be given an
exclusive tour of the makings of Inden from the senior managing director
himself! He was very passionate when he was teaching us.
Kosyu-Inden is a Japanese craft that is
made from lacquered deerskin with more than four hundred years of history. This
craft originated close to Mount Fuji in the Yamanashi prefecture. It was
originally used to design patterns for certain parts of samurai armors that
required very high skill to make. The soft deerskin allowed the craft to have
high durability, making it ideal for everyday use. The lacquer also prevented
damage to the deerskin and the pattern from the humidity. Nowadays, this craft
is used to create exquisite items such as bags, wallets and purses.
The process of making the handicrafts
involve, dyeing, cutting, lacquering, drying and sewing. As electronic sewing wasn’t
available in the past, the artisans used to cut the lacquered deerskins out to
create purses as shown in the pictures.
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The finished result!
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Nowadays,
the artisans at Inden-ya are able to make all sorts of handbags of assorted
sizes due to accumulated experience and the accessibility of technologies such
as the industrial sewing machines.
Our last visit was the Hayakawa Orchards of
grape that were located near the Zenkoji temple. All of us were able to
experience grape picking by cutting of the stems with special scissors. The
grapes that we’ve picked we were allowed to eat. Depending on the season,
different types of grapes are grown but the ones I was able to eat were so many
grapes such as Shine Muscat. There were many more grapes available but some
weren’t ready to be eaten. Since we had a large group, we picked many grapes.
Mr.Hayakawa
of our guide during the grape picking. He guided us towards grapes that
were ripe for picking! He was a very friendly person!
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| The fruits of our labors. |
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