Aoba アオバ

Who is Aoba?

Aoba, formally Aoba Co., Ltd., was founded in August 1968 and has planned and sold lacquered chopsticks in Obama City, Fukui Prefecture, ever since, according to its own site. The company describes its own products as wakasa-nuri-bashi, Wakasa lacquered chopsticks, the regional lacquerware craft that gives Obama its name in the trade. Its own site says every pair is made within Obama City itself, and frames that as a matter of traceability: local craftspeople hand-finish each pair one at a time, so who made a given piece and where can always be traced.

What does Aoba make?

Aoba's own site describes an industry-leading range, running from traditional lacquer patterns and mother-of-pearl inlay work through to animal motifs and plainer modern designs. In 2021 the company launched an EF, Earth Friendly, line using recycled material from PET bottles. It was registered as a Fukui Prefecture SDGs Partner the following year. Not every pair in that range uses the same finish. Some carry a genuine lacquer coating, and others are finished in a polyester urethane coating instead; our own listings state plainly which is which rather than calling both by the same name.

What do we carry from Aoba?

What we have on hand runs to everyday chopsticks in named designs rather than a single house pattern: cats, rabbits, dragonflies, a print based on Hokusai's Great Wave off Kanagawa, and several seasonal and pattern sets, most around twenty-three centimetres long. Two are sold as gift sets paired with a small ceramic sauce dish, one in a Daruma design and one in an Okame design. Every pair we carry is made in Japan, and the listings mark most of them as dishwasher safe, which fits everyday coated chopsticks rather than the slower, hand-built lacquerware our material guide to lacquer describes. Our chopsticks guide covers the range alongside the other materials we carry.

Is this the same as the Wakasa lacquer collaboration chopsticks we also carry?

No. What we carry from Aoba is their everyday range, made in Obama City and listed as dishwasher safe. A separate, slower pair we carry is a collaboration between a Kutani kiln and Wakasa lacquer craftspeople, built by the traditional method our lacquer guide describes, and it is not dishwasher safe. Both trace back to the same regional craft, but they are not the same product, and we keep the two claims separate rather than letting one borrow the other's story.

How do you look after Aoba chopsticks?

Most of what we carry from Aoba is listed as dishwasher safe by the maker, unlike genuine hand-built lacquerware. Even so, hand washing keeps any painted or inlaid pattern looking sharper for longer, so it is worth doing when you can. Dry them fully before putting them away, the same habit that keeps any wooden chopstick from warping.