Launching Zen Craftworks
DaiLY UP has launched its own brand, Zen Craftworks — a brand that delivers Japanese traditional craftsmanship as hands-on experience kits you complete yourself.
Why We Started
At DaiLY UP, our mission is to uncover hidden value and help it reach its full potential. We help businesses and brands communicate their true worth to the people who need to see it.
Along the way, through encounters with artisans across Japan, we came to feel the same way about traditional craftsmanship. Skills refined over generations carry a depth you can only understand by experiencing them firsthand. We wanted to bring that value to more people. Zen Craftworks was born from that desire.
What the Brand Delivers
What Zen Craftworks offers is not a finished product — it's an experience. Learn, create by hand, and live with it. Discover the history of a craft through video, shape something with your own hands, and place the finished piece where you'll see it every day. Everything you need for that experience comes together in a single kit.
First Release: Takasaki Daruma Painting Kit
Our first kit is a hands-on art experience featuring Takasaki Daruma, a traditional craft from Takasaki, Gunma Prefecture. You start with a plain white Daruma, individually hand-shaped by an artisan, and layer on the colors you choose, paint the face, and inscribe your wish to complete it. The kit includes everything you need — paints, brushes, a video guide, and even incense to set the mood — making it a true all-in-one experience that begins the moment you open the box. The estimated crafting time is around three hours.
Supervised by Takeuchi Daruma
This kit was created under the supervision of Kunitsugu Takeuchi, the third-generation head artisan of Takeuchi Daruma (Takasaki, Gunma), a workshop founded in 1937. The quality and depth of this experience are made possible only by a workshop that has carried on the craft for generations in Takasaki — the heart of Daruma production in Japan.
What's Ahead
Following the Takasaki Daruma, Zen Craftworks will continue to introduce experience kits featuring traditional crafts from across Japan. We aim to expand our partnerships with artisans and workshops, creating more opportunities for people to experience the richness of handcraft.
Artisans and workshops interested in this initiative are welcome to reach out through our contact form.
Closing
Make history your canvas — and express it in your own colors.
Bringing the richness of handcraft closer to everyday life. The journey of Zen Craftworks begins here.
