Sudden winter.

I started this newsletter on a train 1 month ago from Kanazawa to Toyama, thinking the ride was a longer. So this Unresolved, the first of 2024 has one foot still in 2023.

We had an eventful past few weeks visiting CW's parents in Japan over winter break. After 33 hours of travel, we slept briefly and caught a 6am bullet train from Tokyo to Kanazawa, cutting through the mountains to the west coast, we arrived in a sudden winter wonderland.

Day 1 with in drenched clothes we checked out the Museum of Contemporary Art in Kanazawa. Day 2 the National Crafts Museum. Inside they supplanted the studio + tools (pictured above) of renowned lacquer artist Matsuda Gonroku. Beside it was a video of the artist at work. Witnessing the intimacy between Matsuda and his work, made us consider our own acts of making and more generally what making looks like today.

There is something important and quite moving about maintaining that scale of intimacy. A one-to-oneness in terms of time spent in focussed contemplation and also the scale of the body in relationship to the work. Ongoing advances in tools to assist the act of making, invite us to re-imagine craft. Not as a set of operations done to a material, or as the resulting artifact. But as an intimate and devoted human process, where time spent matters.

View from a snowy train.

A magical 20-minute window of blue sky in the garden Kenroku-en. Check out how the trees are bound up for winter... or maybe they are like that all year round?!

Everyday on our way out of the house CW made a whistle out of the bamboo he snagged from outside his parent's house. This one had 3 tones and was bound with a ziptie and some paracord.

Pencil Type-Cucumber.

Circa 1930 Cucumber shaped pencil by Okazaki Kazuo spotted at the National Craft Museum. Also we're pretty sure it's a pickle.

A scene from the Evangelion installation at the small worlds museum. A beautiful display of making and storytelling. Definitely check it out if you are ever in Tokyo.

More from small worlds museum. Scaffolding was 💯.

And...last but not least from Small Worlds Museium... there are little buttons every 5 or so meters where you push and activate something in the exhibit. Some of the buttons make an entire roof come off a building, others activate tiny and hard to find details, like this guy peeing next to an Apollo launch station.

Eating a konbini potato.

Meeting with a family run bindery in Tokyo.

A very bad photo from an amazing retrospective of artist Yasuko Toyoshima at MOT. Visit this link to see more of her work.

Glass molds from Toyama glass art museum.

A perfect ice-cream / chocolate bar.

Photo by Bryson Malone.

Gratitude.

I don't think we ever said thank you for all the support in 2023. Thank you! We tried and are continuing to try out a bunch of new stuff, and figuring out how to make our studio run in a way that makes us proud and fulfilled. Every day we are incredibly grateful to get to do what we love.

We've been sold out of a lot of stuff since December. Our classics are starting to trickle back in. Titanium Herring Blades just arrived yesterday. Pen Type-Bs should be coming in late next week/week after.

For those of you who purchased orange ones, you have been incredibly patient as we resolve unforeseen quality issues. And same for those who supported 55 66 88 on kickstarter or as a pre-order, thank you for your patience. We are just today starting to ship out those items. If you're a kickstarter backer you need to fill out a new survey if you haven't :)

In bonkers news, check out this youtube video we received from someone who got Brass Spin Top V4 and spun it on a mirror for 5 minutes and 47 seconds. Impressive.

We're sending a time capsule to London in a few weeks.

It's bag mania.

Testing.

More bag testing. This chalk bag is made with old climbing webbing hoarded from the 90s and taken from Taylor's childhood bedroom.

One of your Key Wrangler's got run over by a car. steel < titanium. but gotta say this thing is beautiful.

OK last photo. Shot by Shane Singh in December. He said had a bit of a technical mishap that day, but I love what come out. Adhesive reflective patches !!!

One more thing.

We're thinking about changing how we drop Solid State Watches, and are going to stop sending out those notifications to this newsletter. If you still want Solid State Watch drop notifications by email or text, subscribe below.