In the beginning of 2010 I was surfing eBay auctions when suddenly one of the lots attracted my attention.
There was a stunning Japanese cigarette case for sale. Then I didn’t know yet it was made in a
Nunome Zogan technique, but it was so beautiful, that I was completely amazed and bought it. That’s how I started
collecting Japanese cigarette cases from the Meiji era (and later on from the Taisho and Showa eras as well).
By the time, I realized that there is so little information about these
cases, especially their makers, that I started my own research. The purpose of this website is to attribute different Japanese cigarette
cases by maker’s marks engraved on them and is updated from time to time. At some moment I thought it will be useful to people
that have such cases to know a little bit about the artist who created the piece they own, without making a long time research, and
I decided to share the information I found so far.
In recent years the website has greatly grown and now includes marks
and signatures of more than 450 different makers, examples of
more than 1,000 different cigarette cases, a large amount of information
about companies and firms produced
damascene (but not only) metalworks, production techniques and even short stories about the scenes depicted on the cases themselves. If you have information that
is not provided here, it is appreciated if you can share it with me.
Major part of the information on this website is found, classified and organized in collaboration with a jeweller and metalsmith
Fred Zweig (USA) and a retired collector of Japanese Meiji applied arts
and self taught restorer of patination Chris Penry (UK).
