Japanese Edo Broom | S

A smaller hand-bound broom of broom-corn, a kind of sorghum traditionally planted on the 5th of June and harvested on the 20th of August or after about 75 days of growth, giving the optimum length between ligule (the point at which the stem splits) and tip for the production of properly measured corn brushes. Handbound in Gunma, Japan, by some of the few remaining practitioners of this near-lost art, craftsmen now mostly in their 80s and 90s who yet maintain the methods and traditions of workshops founded before the Meiji period.