Japan’s First Luxury Startup? Inside a Cloisonné Showroom, 1878

Step inside one of the most extraordinary rooms of the Meiji era — a place where art, technology, and global ambition collided.

In 1878, foreign buyers, Japanese artisans, and even curious children gathered inside a velvet-carpeted showroom filled with jewel-toned cloisonné. This was Shippo Gaisha, Japan’s first cloisonné company, founded in 1871 by two former samurai who reinvented themselves as industrial entrepreneurs.

The scene captured in this 19th-century illustration looks almost modern:
• foreign clients sampling tea,
• vast displays of green and cobalt enamelware,
• signage listing enamel materials like a product spec sheet,
• a wall clock symbolising the shift from intuition to precision engineering.

This wasn’t just a shop.
It was a prototype of the modern design-tech startup — part showroom, part laboratory, part global export hub.

At Shippo Gaisha, artisans fused copper wires, coloured glass paste, and high-temperature kilns to produce shippo-yaki, a Japanese interpretation of cloisonné that dazzled Europe. Their work earned top prizes at the world fairs in Vienna and Philadelphia, catching the attention of buyers in Paris, London, and even Tiffany & Co. in New York.

The impact was enormous. Cloisonné became one of Japan’s most admired luxury exports, shaping Western perceptions of Japanese craftsmanship and helping fuel the country’s industrial rise.

And the legacy didn’t disappear.
Today you can still visit Shippo Art Village in Aichi, or purchase pieces from the Ando Shippo Store, whose lineage traces back to this very enterprise.

So the next time you encounter Japanese cloisonné in a museum, remember: the journey began in rooms like this — where molten glass met global trade, and a new Japan took shape.