Kuwabara Ouchi-nuri

Kuwabara's Ouchi-nuri Doll Workshop makes Ouchi dolls, a Yamaguchi folk craft the workshop traces to the era of Ouchi Hiroya, the 17th-generation head of the Ouchi clan. Per the workshop's own account, the dolls were originally made to comfort a noblewoman from Kyoto whom Hiroya had married, and were designed to blend Kyoto court aesthetics with local Yamaguchi character -- giving the form a specific claimed origin story rather than a generic 'traditional' label.

The dolls are round, lacquered male-female pairs finished with pure gold leaf and gold powder, presented in paulownia-wood boxes. The workshop's current line runs from small dolls roughly the size of a ping-pong ball up to large ceremonial sets (its size range spans model numbers 15 through 40, priced from about \u00a57,900 to \u00a5165,000), plus related items such as Ouchi lacquer cups, single basket dolls, and tiered hinamatsuri display sets with cases and screens.

The workshop sells through its own BASE-hosted online shop and has posted a public notice that prices were revised upward from April because of rising material costs -- a small but concrete, dated operational detail rather than boilerplate.