Fancy Suzuribako

Japanese Writing Box

A wooden box for storing writing supplies

December 2008

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Explanation

So last year, I made a small Suzuribako to store my Japanese ink stone. It was too small, however, to store nicer brushes or be generally useful, so I decided to make one that was larger, fancier, and more useful. This new one is large enough to store the nicer brushes, and has built in "organizers" to keep supplies in place. At some point I hope to give it a nicer finish, but for now I'm glad it's complete.

In the picture above, the blue thing is a water dropper. The smaller black thing with gold writing on it is an ink stick. The larger black thing with a sloping well in it is the ink stone. What you do is drip a bit of water in the stone, then rub the ink stick up and down the stone through the water to make ink. Then you use the brushes to to write with the ink. Having everything in one box is convenient.

The lid is a simple lift-off lid, and the closed box is about 9 inches wide, 11.5 inches long, and 2 inches tall. It's all held together with glue and pegs, and the joinery at the corners is traditional overlap joinery. The organizer bits are all glued in place.

Corner Joinery

In this close-up image, you may be able to see the overlap joinery and peg fasteners. You can also see that some of the places where the lid top joins to the lid edges are very smooth, and other places are not.

Materials

The box and organizers are made entirely of poplar wood, stained brown with a water-based rosewood stain. The entire box is finished with a satin finish water-based polyurethane.



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