Here, I could go into how the Kamenoko Tawashi has been crafted, not manufactured, since 1907, how, according to the brand’s website, the husks are soaked for four to six weeks before being separated into fibers, which are then coiled in a “delicate process that can only be done by hand.” But I knew nothing of this when I bought my first at a well-curated, Japanese-expat-owned home-goods shop, aptly named Tortoise General Store, in Venice Beach four years ago. After many months, it begins to emit a faint metallic, scrambled-egg-like funk, the bristles develop permanent bedhead, and I know it’s due for a swap. One brush takes ages to become gunky or gross. They may as well be the same, like the beloved dog that dies only to be replaced by an identical dog. Since I bought my first Kamenoko Tawashi in 2016, I’ve owned only three or four.
“Yes, says Manhattan’s Museum of Modern Art, if it is designed both for usefulness and good looks.”) (“Is there art in a broomstick?” wrote Time in 1953. With the right curator, the tawashi might have been featured in MoMA’s Good Design shows of the midcentury, the ones that canonized the balloon whisk, the Lexikon 80 typewriter, and the Slinky. I think it resembles not a turtle but a woodland creature you’d best not touch, a hedgehog maybe, curled in sleep. The ends are secured into a loop about the size of a nickel, useful for hanging on a hook. The brush is most commonly formed by twisting palm-husk bristles around a stiff wire, which is doubled back to form a bushy U. The Kamenoko Tawashi name refers to the brush’s specific shape, said to evoke a baby turtle-though I would never have said so were it not for that drawing I didn’t know until now, when I googled it, that kamenoko means “baby turtle” in Japanese. A sweet illustration is ringed in red at the package’s center-a turtle with its head craned back, as if the animal had just been surprised from behind. This one comes in a package that resembles a small, cheddar-colored bag of chips, about the length and width of an adult hand with the thumb folded in. A tawashi is any brush of stiff natural fiber used for washing, usually dishes and pans.
It’s a tawashi, specifically the Kamenoko Tawashi from Nishio-Shouten Co., Ltd., made in Japan.
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