"Challenging new approaches with a playful mind.
I enjoy my work as an engraver."

A broad smile suffused his face. He was wearing an apron with his favorite traditional Sake maker's emblem and a pair of NIKE sneakers. Mr. Kikuchi, the engraver at SHINKO STUDIO, also looks totally different from the image of an Edo craftsman but the gap is bridged by his unique sense of beauty.

A great baseball pitcher throws many different kinds of pitches. Mr. Kikuchi can make many different kinds of lines with one tagane (a cold chisel). He has hundreds of taganes around his desk, so he can engrave unlimited styles of line. Mr. Kikuchi said "Engraving brings life or death to the jewelry. You have to concentrate every moment to engrave fine lines and tiny details less than 0.1 mm." Even using the best materials and the perfect completion of a piece up to engraving process, a failure of engraving will destroy the whole thing. Expert engraving needs good tools, experience and motivation for the best results.

"Current chisels are made with high quality metal, so you don't need to sharpen them so often. But everyday I sharpen the ones that I have been using for a long time. My engraving work starts with sharpening the tools. I make different kinds of lines with one chisel, and use different chisels for different sizes and metals." To become a great engraver, you need to create a lot of work; it is hard to stay motivated. And it is very difficult to motivate the craftsmen."

"At that point" Mr. Kikuchi said, "SHINKO STUDIO is very good at motivating craftsmen. At the meeting, they show me design sketches and pull out new ideas from me. And they are known for designs with Japanese tastes. Even before them, I had seen Japanese designs but SHINKO STUDIO's designs are more intricate and playful. That's something which I had never seen before. So it's always challenging and fun for us.

Especially their signature "Tsuji-ga-Hana" and "Yuki" were tough with their simplicity. When I engrave a motif such as a plant, I always try to put life into it".

At the end of the interview, a teenager who was a student at the school where Mr. Kikuchi taught came to visit his studio. Mr. Kikuchi opens the studio and welcomes "future craftsmen". "The numbers of engravers were declining when I started to work, now it's even fewer. So I want to be a part of training new generations," Mr. Kikuchi said with a smile. His friendly attitude is far from the image of a cranky Edo craftsman, he just looks like he is thoroughly enjoying the gap between tradition and contemporary life.