If you happen to be in Tokyo between April 3d and April 5th and have some spare time, you should check out Art Fair Tokyo 2009.  Most of the exhibits are more focused on contemporary art, but there are four booths that I think you should visit that are antique based.  I will quickly list the vendors of interest and briefly describe what you will see.

Shouun Oriental Art: Booth D11.  Artworks from the Jomon to Edo era.  This should be super cool.

Mita Arts Gallery: Booth E06.  Woodblock prints from the Edo to Meiji era.

Gallery Kono: Booth D01.  Early Imari and Kakiemon Porcelain as well as examples of Maki-e lacquer.

Tannaka: Booth D13.  Pottery from the Kamakura and Muromachi eras; Tamba-yaki, Tokoname-yaki, Shigaraki-yaki.  As well as Noh artifacts; costumes, masks, and instruments.

There might be other exhibitors showing antiques, but these were the ones I found as I went through the exhibitor list which is extensive.  Many have links to their home pages, so feel free to peruse them to see if anything else piques your interest (click here).  You’ve got 2 weeks to book your flight, so check your calender, it looks like a huge exhibit not to be missed.

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There are alot of nice tansu up for auction right now, so I might be posting alot about the ones that I find interesting. Here is one of them, a cha dansu from the Taisho era.

What I like about cha dansu is that some of them have chigai dana (staggered shelves), which I aesthetically love. As a big fan of architecture, I really like the Tokonoma (literally meaning bed-space), a distinct display area that evolved as an aspect of Shoin style architecture during the Muromachi period. The one side of the tokonoma held a hanging scroll and maybe some ikebana (flower arrangement), while the other side consisted of some storage space with built in cabinets and also some chigai dana. Cha dansu borrowed the chigai dana as a way to display some of the tea ceremony materials during the late Edo era.

This piece is constructed with keyaki, sugi, and hinoki, with two sets of hiki-do (sliding doors) and one kendan buta (drop fit door), fairly typical of the style. Another familiar trait is the lack of lockplates. This type of furniture was used during the offering of tea, which was a normal everyday hospitality for guests. If you had a little money, you might possess a cha dansu to add a little class to this polite exchange. What a nice way to display and store all your tea utensils.

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