Okecraft Wooden Baby Spoon by Nobue Nishimura

This spoon for a child’s hand was made by Nobue Nishimura in Oketo, Hokkaido.

Using a shape perfected over years in her craft, the spoon is pleasantly curved and optimised for a small hand.  It has a flattened, sanded heal that allows it sit on the dinner table.

It is actually rather nice to use as an adult too, for small desserts.  

The spoons have a clear wood finish and are made from Hokkaido sourced wood (in this case birch wood).  These are right handed versions.

From a care perspective, it is not suitable for microwaves, dishwashers or abrasive sponges when washing.

Each spoon is hand made, with small variations but are around 12cm long, and 3cm wide at the widest part of the spoon.

About Okecraft

The story of Okecraft is a story of a community, and of its sustainable reinvention.  Situated in the Okhotsk region of northernmost Japan, Oketo is a settlement of around 2800 people.  With a history of logging and agriculture, in the early 1980s it was looking for new project.  A visit from the designer and craft revivalist Yoshio Akioka in 1983 was the spark to build the community as a home for wood craft.  To inspire ‘a new lifestyle culture from the North’, as Akioka put it.  The outcome was the birth of ‘Okecraft’, and a centre for wood turning that has become a magnet for those wishing to train in woodwork, and spend time with the trees in Oketo’s rich natural setting.  The motto of Oketo today is ‘for wood and for people’ and the objects made there have a special warmth and character.  This is drawn from the original manifesto that inspired them: for a new sustainability and quality of life.  A community of makers in the beautiful seclusion of a wooded landscape, in daily contact with their material.

About Nobue Nishimura

Packed trains and high, dense housing blocks.  The north of Hokkaido is a world away from the Japan of this stereotype. Here, the journey from house to house is a considerable one, and inhabitants are comfortably outnumbered by trees.  This is the environment in which Nobue Nishimura works in, and finds concentration in daily perfecting her range of handmade wooden cutlery.  Her work inevitably travels to find its users, and does so all around Japan, where it is loved for the precision of its craft, and the sensitivity to its material.