Chopsticks 箸

What materials do chopsticks come in?

The everyday pair in our range is wood under a lacquer coating: a natural hardwood core with a painted or lacquered finish over it, made in Japan, and light enough for daily use. Those listings describe the coating simply as "a lacquer coating" without naming a traditional regional style, and the maker states this everyday coated finish is dishwasher safe. A step up from that is genuine artisan lacquer: our Wakasa lacquer chopsticks, made in a collaboration between a Kutani kiln and lacquer craftspeople working in the Wakasa tradition from Obama City in Fukui, each pair natural hardwood finished by one artisan rather than machine-coated. Read our lacquer material guide for how that traditional finish is made and how to look after it, since it is a slower, hand-built process than the everyday coated pair and rewards gentler care. For something completely different, we also carry glass chopsticks from Hirota Glass, a Tokyo glassmaker whose own page dates the company to 1899; each pair is handblown, so small air bubbles in the glass are a trait of the material rather than a flaw. The maker recommends hand washing rather than a dishwasher. For a child learning to use chopsticks, we stock a short training pair in plastic that the maker lists as dishwasher safe.

What lengths are available?

Adult pairs on our shelf run from twenty-one centimetres up to twenty-five, and a few designs are sold in two lengths at once, a shorter pair in one colour and a longer pair in another, so you pick by colour as much as by size. The most common adult lengths we carry are twenty-one, twenty-two and a half, twenty-three and twenty-three and a half centimetres, with our Hirota glass pair the longest at twenty-five. None of our listings state a hand-size formula for picking a length, so rather than invent a rule, the honest answer is to go by feel: a shorter pair suits a smaller hand or a lighter grip, a longer pair suits a bigger hand or a bigger plate. Children's chopsticks run much shorter: our training pair for a right-handed child is fourteen and a half centimetres, and a bento-set pair we carry for a child is eighteen centimetres.

What does a chopstick rest add?

A rest keeps the tips off the table between bites, and it is also where a lot of the personality on the table comes from, since our rests span far more shapes than the chopsticks themselves: ceramic animals and motifs from several small Japanese potteries, plus a pair of tin rests from Nousaku cast in a thunderbird and a fortune-fish design. A rest is sold on its own in most cases, so you can mix a plain pair of chopsticks with a rest that has more character, or the other way around. See how we lay chopsticks into a full table setting for one way to do it.

Do you carry chopstick gift sets?

Yes, several. The common format pairs one design of chopsticks with a small ceramic dish in a box, sized for a single place setting rather than a full table, which makes it an easy small gift on its own or alongside something bigger. Browse accessories for the current range of chopsticks, rests and gift sets, since exact designs turn over as they sell.

How do you wash chopsticks?

It depends on the material, and the safest habit is to follow the specific listing rather than assume one rule covers all of them. Our everyday lacquer-coated wood pairs and the children's plastic pair are both listed by their makers as dishwasher safe. Genuine artisan lacquer, like our Wakasa pairs, is better hand washed the way any real lacquer piece is, since a dishwasher's heat and pressure are hard on a hand-applied finish over years of use even when a listing allows it; see our lacquer care guide for the detail. Glass chopsticks are the exception across the board: Hirota recommends hand washing rather than the dishwasher, the same as their cut glass.

Quick answers

These are the questions people ask us most often about chopsticks, answered briefly.

What materials do your chopsticks come in? Everyday lacquer-coated wood, genuine artisan Wakasa lacquer, glass from Hirota Glass, plus a plastic training pair for children.

What length of chopsticks should I buy? We do not have a sourced sizing formula to hand out, so it comes down to feel: our adult pairs run from twenty-one to twenty-five centimetres, shorter for a smaller hand, longer for a bigger one.

Can chopsticks go in the dishwasher? Depends on the pair. Our everyday lacquer-coated wood and the children's plastic pair are listed as dishwasher safe; hand wash genuine Wakasa lacquer and glass chopsticks instead.

What are your chopstick rests made from? Mostly ceramic, in animal and seasonal motifs from several small Japanese potteries, plus a pair of tin rests from Nousaku.

Do your chopstick gift sets include a dish? The common format does: one pair of chopsticks with a small ceramic dish, boxed together as a single place-setting gift.