Tatoshi 5, Japan, late Edo (first half 19th century), cm 120x32. These remarkable pieces of patched and pasted papers (in a sort of boro-way) are called tatoshi. They are a marvellous collage of pieces of recycled hand-made paper, and sometimes newspapers for the back, which were painstakingly - yet haphazardly - glued together to obtain sort of a durable medium, as tatoshi were used in a pawn shops to wrap goods, probably kimonos . The brown tone on the paper is from the ubiquitous kakishibu, or the tannin extracted from green persimmons. Kakishibu is found on all manner of Japanese utilitarian goods as it adds durability to the fibre it saturates. By examining the calligraphy drawn on many of the papers, we have seen scrawls which bear dates from the early to mid 19th century, so they were clearly part of everyday’s life at the end of Japan's Edo Period. The wonderful texture of each individual piece is hard to represent with photos… we will try though. What we cannot show is their great ‘tactile’ feeling. a very Japanese object, with a great visual quality. Almost a contemporary works of art.