Flower Cart - Katsushika Hokusai Phone Case

You'll hear the Flower Cart before you see it, a creak of lacquer under a heap of spring. Katsushika Hokusai designed this Edo period woodblock print, and his hanaguruma arrives loaded to the brim. Heaped botan peonies in shell pink next to kiku chrysanthemums rimmed in mustard yellow. Gray-green leaves crowding every gap. In this nishiki-e, the flowers read as a wish for bloom that never runs out.

Above the rim a woven basket zigzags in charcoal stitches. Then the Genji wheel takes the weight. Wheels of this kind rolled through the pages of The Tale of Genji, and Hokusai kept them turning on paper. Its lacquered rim swells in ink-black lobes. Pewter gray points stab inward toward a rosette of coral and dusty rose, each petal split by one carved line. You can almost hear the key block of this Japanese woodcut bite.

Bone white paper peeks through where pigment wore thin. That worn grace now wraps a matte iPhone tough case, a Japanese art phone case that asks to be held. Pick it up. The wheel carries two hundred years of spring straight into your hand. Its peonies still blushing at the whole street.