Traditional handmade buttons gain attention
TARUMIZU, JAPAN They were known as “phantom” items: small buttons just a few centimetres wide with magnificent, colourful paintings of flowers, birds and other motifs from nature. Known as Satsuma buttons, they became popular overseas beginning in the Meiji era (1868-1912), but were rarely for sale in the domestic market.
That’s changed since Shiho Murota revived the buttons more than 10 years ago. The Japanese designer’s meticulous craftwork has become so popular, she now receives orders from overseas.
Satsuma refers to the historical domain that roughly corresponds to today’s Kagoshima Prefecture, where Murota lives. The buttons are said to have been created from local Satsuma ware ceramics, as an export mainly to Europe to help the region earn foreign currency.
They were little-known in Japan, however, and eventually all the producers disappeared.
Murota, now 42, learned about Satsuma buttons around 2003. She was working as a ceramics painter at a local pottery for white Satsuma ware, which was originally produced for the local lord and upper-class society, and a picture in a magazine caught her eye.
She looked into the subject, which eventually led her to visit a museum in Tokyo that owns numerous Satsuma buttons.
At the museum, Murota found small buttons with pictures illustrating people’s lives, such as seasonal landscapes and how children dressed. She was fascinated by their unique designs, which reminded her of ukiyo-e paintings.
“I felt the universe in those small buttons,” she said.
She quit pottery in 2005 and set up her own atelier in a vacant house in Tarumizu to start her efforts to create Satsuma buttons. Murota found it difficult to draw a picture on a small “canvas” measuring just two to five centimetres in diameter. It ultimately took three years for her to become confident in her work. In 2007, Murota held her first solo exhibition in Kagoshima city, where she received a much bigger response than she expected.
When making Satsuma buttons, Murota first draws sketches and applies colour. She then fires the items in an electric kiln and applies additional colour before putting them back in the kiln. It takes two to three weeks to make the buttons, making mass production impossible. Murota makes 30 to 50 Satsuma buttons on order per month.