This post is part of a series of stories about collections — the treasures we gather in our homes, display for our guests, and that bring us joy. If you have a collection to share, contact diydelray[at]yahoo.com.
Dana has done a superb job taking souvenirs and keepsakes from her travels in Japan and displaying them on the walls in her home. We featured Dana’s home in a recent post about living with children in a small home, where her art collection hangs in perfect harmony with her children’s art. Here she tells us about her art collection from Japan.
The fish print was given to me as a going-away gift by Miura-san, the owner and chef of a Japanese inn in my town. He had a gigantic — and exquisite — gyotaku that hung in his restaurant that I always admired.
I bought this Noren textile in Kyoto and it hung as a room divider in various apartments I rented once back in the states. It wasn’t until several years after I returned that I had the idea to break it into two pieces and have it framed.
This Banzuke sumo schedule was given to me as a going-away gift from the vice principal of the junior high school where I worked who knew how much I loved sumo. The schedule shows the ranking of wrestlers, with the highest ranking listed in the largest characters toward the top. The schedule comes out about two weeks before the tournament.
I have two photographs that hang in my front room that were given to me as going-away gifts from my karate teacher, an amateur photographer.
One features the small motor boat as it heads across the Kitakami River. The boat ferried students from a remote village to the schools in my town and one of my favorite things to do was sit next to the river and watch the boat cross in the early evening when the sun was setting.
The triptych that hangs in the dining room are from Japanese art exhibits here in the states. I had them framed in Japanese-inspired frames at a shop in Maryland.
In her personal blog last March, Dana wrote about the 2011 earthquake and tsunami that ravaged the seaside town in the Miyagi prefecture where she lived for two years. To me, this terrible loss makes Dana’s descriptions about each of her pieces all the more poignant.
