The Nawikawa Cloisonné Museum is located in a small villa lost in the narrow streets south of Heian Jingu. This residence, built in 1894, was the home of Namikawa Yasuyuki (並河 靖之), an artist of the Meiji and Taisho periods. Namikawa started his career of cloisonné artist at 28. But WTF is cloisonné? Cloisonne is an old technique for decorating metallic objects. It consists in building wire frame enclosures in which enamel of different colours is poured. Every outline of every coloured region in the drawing is first delimited by wires, then enamel is poured and the piece is cooked, and finally polished.
The museum is actually quite small, and has around 130 pieces from Namikawa. This small number represents a large collection firstly because most of his pieces were sold abroad and secondly cloisonné is very time consuming, so artists can't make many pieces. The process of cloisonné is nicely illustrated in the exhibits.
Namikawa earned a few international prizes, among which is the 'Exposition Internationale de Paris'. This made him famous worldwide, and resulted in many foreigners visiting him in Kyoto. Namikawa built his house with higher lintels (1.8m) to accommodate these visitors. Unique! The villa also has many sliding partitions that use glass instead of rice paper. This was very unusual at the time.
Besides the museum, the villa has a nice photogenic garden with a pond that reaches under the main building. Recommended for: Access: 800 円 Nearby: the Traditional Crafts Museum 京都伝統産業ふれあい館 (350m), Kōbun-tei 好文亭 (360m), Awata-jinja 粟田神社 (400m), Shōren-in 青蓮院 (530m), Chion-in 知恩院 (560m), Murin-an 無鄰菴 (560m), Yuzen-en 友禅苑 (610m), Heian-jingū 平安神宮 (710m), Yasaka-jinja 八坂神社 (760m), Tairyu-sanso 對龍山荘 (780m),... External links: Website, ウィキペディア, Kyoto Navi, Satellite view, Map Keywords: Japan, 日本, Japon, Kyoto, 京都, 南左京, Sakyo-ku, 並河靖之七宝記念館, Namikawa Cloisonné Museum Statistics: visited on 4 occasions, id 454, 8 photos (4 extra photos can be found in the archive). |
