Wednesday, August 01, 2001

Makuras and Tansu Furniture

Okay, the pillow was easier to find than a quilt. About.com says that the traditional japanese pillow is called a "makura" and is filled with red beans or buckwheat chaff, but another article in the Las Vegas Review-Journal calls a buckwheat chaff pillow a "sobakawa". One of the places where I found japanese style (and decorated) buckwheat pillows is PeacockForever.com (but there's no place to order online). One of the places that I may need to go and visit is Katagiri at 224 E 59th St in New York City; they seem to carry a good sized collection of imported merchandise. The hard part in looking for a good sobakawa pillow is avoiding all of the "as seen on TV" products (which are generally cheap knock-offs of the real thing). Aparently, these pillows were traditionally made by the family (according to "Rediscovering Japanese Life at a Bike's Pace by James Salter") and can't be bought in a store.

For future reference, Yahoo! has a page full of links to web sites about Tansu Furniture (which is related to traditional japanese furniture). There's also the Yahoo! Kimono listings, the Yahoo! Japanese Gifts page of listings, and the Yahoo! Asian Gifts page of listings.

posted by Wuphon's at 7:33 AM