Collection: Metal

Every piece in this collection is a tool for ikebana, made in Sanjo, in Niigata Prefecture - a town that has worked metal since the seventeenth century, where hard winters and inherited skill still produce blades of uncommon quality.

The scissors are school-specific: Koryu, among ikebana's oldest schools, uses a looped tsuru - crane - handle that sits close to the blade for exact control, forged in S58C black carbon steel that takes and holds an edge cleanly. The kenzan - the spiked metal frogs that hold stems upright in a shallow vessel - do the unglamorous work that makes an arrangement possible in the first place.

None of it is decorative. A pair of scissors, a kenzan - these are working tools, made by people in a four-century-old metalworking town who have spent their lives making them well.