Commissions
Architecture & Interiors
The carved crown of the wisteria chandelier, during installation. Fujii-gumi headquarters, Toyama.
Poiesis brings Inami’s master carvers into architectural and interior projects: private residences, hotels, restaurants, places of worship, cultural spaces and more.
For centuries, the town’s carvers have worked within architecture itself, on the gates and halls of temples and above the sliding doors of Japanese homes. In recent decades they have also carved for a much wider range of buildings, from restaurants and company headquarters to contemporary homes. Every work is conceived for its setting, sized to its proportions and placed where it will be lived with every day.
Where Carving Can Go
We have seen carving on temple gates and on kitchen cabinets. The list below is where it most often goes. Beyond that, the only limit is imagination.
In the building
- Ranma & Transoms
- Carved panels above doors and between rooms, letting light and air pass while they define a space.
- Doors & Gates
- An entrance is where a building speaks first, and the craft that made gates for temples across Japan can frame the entrance to a home, a hotel or a place of gathering.
- Panels & Screens
- Carved panels and screens can introduce a landscape, a story, or a personally meaningful subject into a room.
- Columns & Details
- Pillars, brackets and beam ends carved where they stand, so that the elements holding a building up become its ornament.
- Ceilings & Friezes
- Overhead, carving can fill a ceiling or run along a wall as a frieze, drawing the eye upward and the length of a room.
In the room
- Lighting
- Carved form can change the light of a room: in one entrance hall in Toyama, more than a thousand carved petals hang around the light.
- Furniture & Objects
- A table or console, kitchen cabinetry, a mirror or carved frame, a box made to hold something precious: the craft in the rhythm of ordinary life.
- Sculpture
- A freestanding work met from many sides, from an intimate piece for a table or alcove to a larger work for a hall or garden.
- Anything Else
- A staircase, a headboard, the front of a bar, the doors of a wardrobe. Bring us the idea, and we will work out with the carvers how to make it.
Working Together
Working with Project Teams
We can join a project at any stage, from the first sketches to a room already built, and we adapt to the way your team already works: your drawings, your schedule, your consultants.
First notes The Brief
We learn the project from your drawings, your schedule and the design intent, at whatever stage you bring us in.
The developed sketch The Proposal
We bring in the master best suited to the work. A written proposal sets out the piece, its dimensions and wood, the timeline and the fee.
The full-size drawing The Drawing
The master draws the work at full size. Your team comments over agreed rounds, and carving begins once the final drawing is approved.
The carving The Carving
Carved by hand in Inami. We send photographs and notes as it develops, at least once a month on longer projects.
Into the crate Delivery
Packed by the craftsmen, shipped by fine-art shippers and insured. We coordinate delivery and plan installation with your team.
Shown: The Bridge Between Japan and the United States, a Poiesis commission carved by Nambu Hakuun III in 2025, from his first notes to the crate.
The story of this commission
Bring Inami into Your Project
Bring the world’s finest woodcarving into the places you design and the objects you live with: a work made for its room alone, by hands that have devoted their lives to the craft, carrying centuries of history into the spaces where people live and gather.
Discuss a project
