Face to Face

Seven artists in Switzerland moved to save Japanese tradition like a story of Japanese famous movie Seven Samurai. We show seven darumas created by them.

Daniel Göttin: artist                     Hildegard Spielhofer: artist

Gerda Maise: artist                     Adriano A. Biondo: photographer

Martin Cleis: artist                      Marco Trüeb: praphic designer

Linda Cassens Stoian: artist, theoretician, researcher

About darumaden

[darumaden] is a project name that tells about daruma.

(daruma-den: “daruma” is the traditional culture of Japan. “den” means like a history.)

Daruma has made by Japanese for 150 years and over. At the beginning it was around as a toy that protects against infections. When Japanese government gave to their power to export a silk, people believed in daruma as God of sericulture. It became a very lucky item and popular.

I was born as a daruma craftman’s grand daughter. I have helped to sell some daruma at a market since I was a elementary student. It is necessary for seller and buyer to communicate because  daruma doesn’t have a price tag. I think this exchanging is cool and charm. I always try to tell to customers its attractive points at  there. 

Recently, some young people who don‘t know well about daruma ask me what it helps our life. I can’t tell enough in limited time during the market. We need to set opportunity to introduce before people judge that  “It’s  a needless doll for me.”

Daruma is not only a lucky item but also the existence that it has us awaking to our wish. We use to draw its one eye when we wish on daruma. Then we draw another one if we got our wish. We try hard to give it eyes, too.

We are sending these attractions (meaning, variety, how to make, how to use) of daruma in the Internet. We aim to keep the tradition and build up our future by expressing and suggesting new styles...This is “darumaden”.

Charity for Japan East earthquake　

We sell especially some emidarumas, we give a part of sale to the Tohoku district.

We wish the devastated area revive as soon as possible.