A pair of late 19th Century acacia wood silk spools, or itomaki, handcrafted in Japan during the Meiji Restoration (1868-1912), when silk production in Japan was still a cottage industry. They have been sensitively, and reversibly, repurposed as a pair of small table lamps, with solid brass fittings and a vintage-style cable.
The lamps bear the marks of their industrial past, with knocks and bumps that add no small amount of individual character. Both are sear-marked with ? – meaning ‘fortune’ or ‘good luck’.
As spools, they are largely redundant, but as lamps they are fully functional, balanced, and take on a surprising mid-century aesthetic (perhaps revealing the inspiration for American-Japanese designer Isamu Noguchi's late 1940s wooden table lamps for Knoll that took on similar forms).
The lamps have been fitted with British made solid brass switched B22 bayonet bulb holders, and wired with generous lengths of premium Italian double insulated 3-core cable with a vintage-style rich emerald green braid that reflects the colourful silks the itomaki were once used to wind.
The timber has been thoroughly cleaned and brought back to life with many applications of tung oil, a process that takes a week or more to do properly, and was given a final finishing coat in museum-grade microcrystalline wax.
Pair Early 20th Century Vintage Japanese Wooden Itomaki Silk Spool Table
Condition
Marks to the wooden surface, as you'd expect with industrial objects. Stable, with no wobbles to the joints.
Measurements
Height: 280 mm / 11.0"
Width or Diameter: 180 mm / 7.1"
