Kohchosai Kosuga

Kohchosai Kosuga began in 1898 as Kosuga Shoten, a Tokyo bamboo wholesaler founded by Kenzo Kosuga in the Nihonbashi district, supplying woven bamboo ware to the Japanese Imperial household. The early business built a reputation well beyond Japan, taking awards at the 1904 St. Louis World's Fair, the 1910 Japan-British Exhibition in London and the 1911 Dresden International Hygiene Exhibition. Wartime bombing forced the second generation, Chojiro Kosuga, to relocate the workshop to Kyoto in 1949, betting that the city's standing as the center of Japanese traditional craft would let the bamboo work keep developing; the company took its current name, Kohchosai Kosuga, in 1971, honoring family ancestor Kohcho Ueda, an Edo-period artist whose aesthetic still shapes the house style. Production still starts with bamboo hand-harvested in the cold winter months, split with a specialty blade called a kiku-wari, then dyed or lacquered before being woven by hand into tightly patterned baskets, trays and tea-ceremony utensils. The current line runs to roughly 1,000 products, and under managing director Tatsuyuki Kosuga the workshop has taken on international design collaborations, including a leather-and-bamboo Sartorial Collection with the Danish studio OeO, sold alongside the traditional woven forms rather than replacing them. The Kyoto flagship, opened in 2011 on Sanjo-dori, carries both.