Kokeshi Match started as a product of pure creativity. In 1994, as a part of a group exhibition, Kumi Hirasaka drew faces of KOKESHI (traditional Japanese wooden dolls) on each match by hand. In 2000, Kokeshi Matches are mass produced and later expanded into various designs such as chicks, piggies, cats and cranes. Check them out below!
Taking inspirations from both traditional Japanese art to what they encounters in everyday life; from magazines, to music, to random advertisement they find on the train, Hirakasa and her team continues to create art that makes people smile. (You just can’t help it. I smiled when I saw these, seriously) One indispensable and important element in all of their designs is humor, the team’s goal is “…to make something natural and something that gives people a chuckle”
Aside from mass producing their matches for sale, The Kokeshi Team continues to created one -of- a kind pieces for exhibition from 2011 on.
Kokeshi Match Team : Kumi Hirasaka (left), Product/ Graphic Design, Akiko Yamada (center), Public Relations , Shinsuke Nishiumi (right), Web Design
“Three of us work as a team. So we believe that we can do the difficult task by blending specialties of each staff.”
The First Mass Produced Kokeshi Match
Expanded Editions
