Kinpaku: Japanese Gold Leaf Workshop – Gild Your Own Chopsticks

For our first Kinpaku class on Saturday, September 19th, you’ll gild your own pair of chopsticks with Kanazawa gold leaf.

Kinpaku is Japanese gold leaf, beaten until it is one ten-thousandth of a millimetre thick — thin enough to lift on a breath, and light enough to disappear the moment a fingertip touches it. Almost all of it comes from one city: Kanazawa, where artisans have been beating gold for more than four hundred years.

You’ll first learn where Kanazawa gold leaf comes from and how it is made. Then you’ll handle the leaf yourself and pick up the artisans’ four techniques — a flat band rolled around the stick, cut shapes pressed on one by one, fine flakes crumpled between your palms and scattered, and a narrow strip wound into a spiral. Combine them, layer them, or invent your own.

Your instructor seals each pair with a protective topcoat, and you take home the chopsticks you designed, boxed. Gold leaf cannot be lifted once it is down, so every pair is a one-take piece and no two ever come out the same.

No experience is necessary
All materials included
Take home the pair of chopsticks you designed

The instructor: Hideko Koyama grew up in Nanao, Ishikawa — the same prefecture as Kanazawa — among household Buddhist altars finished in gold leaf and metalwork. She studied Japanese literature, history and culture, and has spent the last thirty years in the New York area. She fell for Kanazawa gold leaf after taking a class at Hakuichi in Kanazawa, and now leads workshops to share it with people outside Japan.

PLEASE NOTE: Registration closes 24 hours before the session. Cancellations made within 72 hours of the session are nonrefundable.

RESOBOX, 91 E 3rd Street, New York, NY 10003 · View the class page