Luke Judge

The chest of drawers is an essential furniture piece in the home especially in bedrooms but it also is used for other purposes around the home. This furniture piece dates back several centuries and has evolved from a simple wooden box with a hinged lid to an ornately decorated piece with several drawers and fancy metal hardware. This furniture type is not limited to Western countries only and is also widely used in Asia as well. In Japan they have what is known as the tansu, which are beautifully handcrafted chest of drawers using the finest woods and with elaborate and specially designed metal hardware. These pieces especially the antique ones, are highly priced in the West by collectors and even reproductions are highly sought after.

Types of Tansu

There are several types of tansu each with its own specific use.

• Choba-dansu: These are chests used by merchants to store goods they were selling and they are very elaborately made and use the best metal hardware available for the purpose of impressing customers. Some of these chests could be opened on two sides.
• Kusuri-dansu: These are apothecary chests and used to store herbs by pharmacist and they would have many small drawers.
• Kaidan-dansu: These chests are designed as modular pieces that could come together to form steps.
• Katana-dansu: These are used as storage spaces for swords and are long and low and used only by the Samurai class families.
• Mizuya-dansu: These are used as storage for kitchen utensils and plates and had sliding doors on it aside from the drawers.
• Sendai-dansu: These are the bedroom chest of drawers that are used to store kimonos and other items of clothing  and got its name from the region where the craftsmen that made them were from which is the Sendai region.
• Kuruma-dansu: These are chests of drawers that have wheels on them, a necessity in ancient Japan where fires were a way of life.
• Cha-dansu: This is used to store the implements for the tea ceremony and always made with the finest wood.
• Funa-dansu: These were chests constructed as shipping containers and came in different configurations depending on the contents they were used for.

The chest of drawers in Japan is meticulously made and they even take pains in making beautiful metal hardware for it. They even line the edges and corners with intricately designed metal forged from iron and in some cases copper. Drawer pulls are works of art and even the lock plates are beautifully engraved. It is therefore no wonder that these furniture pieces are highly prized in the West.

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