Kaikado
I know, I know: I have a fondness for a designed object. Bear with me and there’ll be a payoff. Kaikado are special. They sell, predominantly, tea canisters.
Tea needs to be stored in airtight containers for it to last as long as possible. Japan makes a lot of tea. Kaikado is headquartered in Kyoto, a 20-minute train ride from Uji, home to the oldest sencha plantations in Japan. So it makes sense that Kaikado exists there, and it has existed in the same family for centuries, because “new” is 100 years old in Kyoto, the regional epicenter of handmade craft in a nation well-known for handmade craft.
Kaikado canisters possess 3 components: the canister itself, an inner lid that fits snugly over the top, and an outer lid that fits over both pieces. A small knob lets you lift the inner lid. The images for this product detail page provide some insight of how this all works.
Craftspeople train for decades to make all 3 fit together perfectly; each lid is matched to its resident canister; lids are not supposed to be swappable. The consequence is an experience of putting a lid back on a canister that feels utterly impossible. The inner lid hangs perfectly on the edge of the canister, with nothing hanging over the edge; a gentle push blows air out of the outer lid’s cavity.
One typically works with imitators: Syuro, for example. I own a few Syuro canisters for my whatever Darjeeling & Assam. I own one Kaikado, bought in person at their boutique in 2018, and it will hold my supply of Ippodo gyokuro until the end of linear time.
So yes, I have one, and it has a sentimental edge. But it got me to wondering: why would anyone realistically own these? It’s one thing to buy one in Kyoto and bring it home as a souvenir. It’s another entirely to buy the thing online, on purpose, after much thought. My co-op has a shelf full of Ball jars. They cost, like, $4. They seldom break, they perform just fine. A Kaikado is $160 as of press time. There is often a waitlist.
Here are some conceivable reasons why one would want to own a Kaikado:
- You are ruggedizing your home, and you want your tea canister to survive an apocalypse where you can still easily make tea.
- You want your tea canister to be handed down among generations. (People actually do do this.)
- Tea is an extremely important ritual to you, and you want to take greater pleasure in your engagement with it. That can mean you make lots of tea (so you handle a canister frequently), or it can mean that tea is a big part of your personal brand or relationality with others (so you have nice tools to show off).
- You visited Kyoto and were gobsmacked by the whole city’s approach to craft.
I cannot think of other reasons.