How to live with kokeshi: placing a Japanese wooden figure in a modern home
A kokeshi does not ask much of you. It does not need watering, only some dusting occasionally. It stands where you put it and it stays.
But where you put it matters more than you might think.
The dark wood of Kon Seiju's Oshinobi Dochu holds her own against the woodblock print background. Sometimes the pattern is exactly what a kokeshi needs.
I have sourced many kokeshi in Japan over the years and I have placed them in my own home in many different configurations before I found what works. Here is what I have learned.
The first kokeshi I placed in my own home I put on a high shelf. It looked wrong immediately, though it took me a few days to understand why. It felt remote, like something in a cabinet. That is not what a kokeshi is.
I moved it to a lower place near the kitchen area and it changed completely. Because the kitchen is where I find myself talking to her and she’s part of the room really.
Lower than you think
That’s why this is my first piece of advice: high shelves are where kokeshi go to become invisible.
They turn into decorative objects you stop seeing. At seated eye level, on a low sideboard or windowsill or directly on the floor if the piece is large enough, a kokeshi does something different. You are not looking up at it. You are meeting it.
For smaller pieces, standing eye level on a shelf works well if the background behind it is simple. Some kokeshi are made in warm reds and blacks and creams and natural wood tones. Against a plain wall, that decoration has room. Against pattern or a saturated colour, it disappears. Unless the wood and color absorbs the background making the doll itself pop like the one you see on the photo here. It brings out her character.
Start with one
The temptation when you have more than one kokeshi is to arrange them straight away. They look good together and the instinct is to group them, to make something of the collection.
My tip is to put one kokeshi somewhere prominent and leave it there for a week. See where your eye goes when you enter the room. See what the space around it does. A single kokeshi placed well has more presence than several grouped quickly. The Japanese idea of ma is part of this: the empty space around an object is not nothing. It is what lets the object exist. Fill that space and you lose the effect.
What goes behind them
The backgrounds that work best are the obvious ones: white or off-white walls, natural linen, pale timber, stone. A kokeshi near a window, where the light shifts across it through the day, shows you the grain in a way that artificial light does not. There is something in that. The texture of turned wood catches differently at nine in the morning than at four in the afternoon and that is reason enough to put them where the light can find them.
Not in direct sun all day though. The pigments on traditional kokeshi are natural and will fade. Near a window out of the direct sun is fine.
Grouping
Three Tsuchiyu kokeshi. Different heights, same hand. The combination sets the tone. Plus, they go very well with the green of plants.
When you are ready to group them, vary the heights. Two or three kokeshi of very similar height read as repetition. When one is noticeably taller than the others, the group starts to feel like a family, like figures that relate to each other.
Pairs work. A meoto, a married couple, is a traditional pairing in Japanese craft and some kokeshi were made with exactly that in mind: two figures, slightly different, meant to stand together. If you have two that belong next to each other, put them next to each other. There is nothing wrong with two.
Mixing traditions is one of my favourite things to do. A Tsuchiyu kokeshi beside a rounder Naruko beside a more painterly sosaku piece is a conversation between three different ways of arriving at the same form. It works, but only with enough space between them that each one can be seen on its own terms. Too close and it becomes noise.
What kokeshi consistently do not work with is clutter. If a shelf is already full, the kokeshi will disappear into it. Better to take something else away first.
With other objects
Kokeshi and ceramics understand each other. A large kokeshi beside a small group of chawan on a low shelf makes complete sense: both traditions share the same logic, handmade, imperfect, made from natural materials, carrying the mark of their maker. The upright form of the kokeshi and the horizontal spread of the bowls balance without competing.
Natural objects work too. A stone, a piece of driftwood, a single dried stem or a small plant. The instinct in Japanese domestic space to bring something from outside in alongside something made by hand is old and still entirely right.
Caring for them
Wood responds to humidity. In very dry conditions, especially centrally heated homes in winter, the wood can crack. Keep kokeshi away from radiators and direct heat sources.
Dust them with a soft dry cloth. Not wet: most kokeshi are painted with water-based pigments and a wet cloth will damage the surface. No oils, no polish. The patina that develops on an old kokeshi over decades is part of what it is. Leave it alone.
What they give back
I notice it every time I visit someone who has placed a kokeshi well. The figure has a stillness that most objects do not. Something in the simplified form, the absence of hands, the quiet face.
In a home full of things that ask for your attention, something that simply stands and is still is worth more than it sounds.
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