Obsessions and how they roll

Yes, I am gonna annoy you with more reveries of my kokeshi obsession. This time I’m going right back to the beginning or the birth of my fixation for Japanese wooden dolls. Hoarding behaviour of this kind often gets triggered by something somewhere in the past. It’s a bit inception-like *): a tiny grain of seed is planted somewhere in the back of your head and once it has grown to a nice little tree you find yourself waking up in a home with, in my case, eight kokeshi dolls…and counting (‘cause, let’s be honest, if I can my hands on another nice item, I’ll definitely buy it). Let’s get back to that day in the year 2006, when I opened this magazine published by a Dutch painting company (Flexa Magazine, for the Dutchies among us).

There was this page with two abstract figurines on it that immediately caught my eye. The little seed was planted. I had to know what those figurines were and, more important, Where-To-Get-Them! Three years and a little tree in my head later (I’m getting all metaphorical), I bought my first two Japanse figurines in San Francisco. (I’m writing this like it’s some sort of heroic story about me becoming a billionair or something… I would have if kokeshi would be worth millions ;-))

So that’s the whole story, there’s nothing more to it. It’s not a very exciting (or long) one, but I just love to write about my little obsessions. As long as they’re harmless like this one, I’ll go ahead and cherish it.

My two sparkin’ new vintage additions to the little wooden doll flock:

*) Inception is one of the best movies I have, I dare to say, ever seen. It’s about planting information in the unconscious mind and that’s as far as I can explain what it’s about. But it’s so cool, you can really take my word for it! :-)