Japanese Antique 【Gyokusendo】Pen Dish

https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/51155671665_8f8920dcee_b.jpg **History of Gyokusendo** The Echigo plain. The Nakanokuchi and Shinano Rivers run like threads stitched through the rice paddies. In the distance, Mount Yahiko looks over the land. The mountain and the copper found within transformed Tsubame-Sanjo and brought it to life with the sound of hammers. For us, this everlasting sound is a tribute to the life given to us and a pledge to continue our work for many more years to come. In the early Edo period, the Shinano River, which flows through Tsubame-Sanjo, was flooded nearly once every three years and agriculture as well as the lives of people suffered enormously. The prefectural governor during this period hired a blacksmith from Edo (present-day Tokyo) to live and work in the region and teach local farmers how to produce Japanese nails. As time went on, what started as a side business in bad years, slowly became the main source of income for more and more people. The use of hammers in Tsubame-Sanjo was taking root. Demand for nails steadily increased as Edo constantly faced the need to rebuild from frequent fires and natural disasters. Tsubame-Sanjo gradually developed as the foremost nail producing region in Japan. As early as the 1650s, artisans in what is now present-day Tsubame were being commissioned to make copper fittings and other ornaments for shrines. By 1700, with the discovery of copper in the neighbouring mountain of Yahiko, copper ornaments would become as common a specialty as iron nails. It is believed that the Tamagawa family had specialized in this sort of work three generations before Gyokusendo's establishment.