Koizumi Hinoki Shelf

A short groove is cut into this hinoki wood shelf — just deep enough to stand a postcard, a photograph, or the paper amulet it was designed for, the o-fuda blessed at a Shinto shrine. Designed by Japanese designer Makoto Koizumi, it takes the form of a Kamidana, the household altar traditionally built to hold what a family considers sacred. The wood is left bare — no stain, no varnish — because Koizumi's instinct is to let a material do its own work.

The tradition runs deep — a Kamidana has held prayers and paper blessings in Japanese homes for centuries — but the shelf doesn't insist on it. Fill it with spice jars in a kitchen, line it with small bottles in a bathroom, or let it hold the book you're mid-way through at the bedside. Left unfinished, hinoki takes on whatever touches it, so an occasional pass of oil or wax is worth it if the shelf is going somewhere damp. Solid hinoki, wall-mounted, unfinished, one shelf and one groove.

Makoto Koizumi received the Mainichi Design Award in 2012, and won the Grand Prize at the Japan Craft Exhibition in 2015. Wms&Co. also carries his Kehai Clock and a cast iron tape dispenser, both with the same understated, materials-first sensibility.

Part of our Japanese Minimalism collection.