Wednesday, February 10, 2016

A princess comes home – paulownia trees and Japanese wedding chests

Recently I planted a new tree in my garden – a paulownia tree. It needs a fair bit of water but it has been going great guns. I saw it at the local Farmers Market and was surprised that they were selling it, since I had thought it was rare in Australia.

Paulownia tree gets a head start in life

The reason it took me by surprise and why I bought it is that I have a Japanese wedding chest from sometime around the 1930s from the Tokyo Region. I drove to Sydney to get it and had to pack the car like some complex puzzle, moving pieces around until it all fitted. The reason I could do this is that Japanese chests like this were often used by merchants travelling around and they are made in sections clipped together that can be separated and stacked.