Dining Table

Provenance

Camera: NIKON D810
Lens: 14.0-24.0 mm f/2.8
Settings: 14mm · f/9.0 · 1.6s · ISO 100
Paper: Ilford Galerie Smooth Cotton Rag 310 gsm

An abandoned dining table and several chairs sit in a decaying room inside a residence at Nichitsu Mining Village. A layer of dust covers the table surface and surrounding floor. Deteriorating walls and a degraded interior surround the furniture. Natural light falls across the scene from an unseen source.

Edition

Open edition

Open edition
Printed to order, no fixed quantity. Each print is hand-signed by the photographer.

Limited edition
A fixed number of prints exist. Once sold, the edition closes permanently. Each print is individually numbered and signed.

$100.00 AUD

Colour

Signed, numbered, with COA. Made to order in 5 to 10 business days (unframed). Shipped in protective packaging with edition certificate, paper-stock reference and a printed care guide.

See certificate sample →

Shipping Free shipping over $250. Ships worldwide, rates calculated at checkout.

Returns Damaged in transit? We replace it. Full policy →

Ships within 10 business days · signed & numbered

In situ

01 PROVENANCE

Print datasheet

Title: Dining Table
Series: Nichitsu Mining Village
Catalogue: NMV-007
Process: Giclée
Captured: 4 May 2016
Camera: NIKON D810
Lens: 14.0-24.0 mm f/2.8
Aperture: f/9.0
Shutter: 1.6s s
ISO: 100
Focal length: 14 mm
Paper: Ilford Galerie Smooth Cotton Rag 310 gsm
Paper size: 290 × 200 mm
Location: Chichibu, Saitama, Japan
Authenticity: C2PA verified provenance →
Recognised by: Highly Commended in Multimedia at the 2016 National Trust of Australia (NSW) Heritage Awards

02 LOCATION

Chichibu, Saitama, Japan

Map · Mapbox · OpenStreetMap

03 THE STORY

About this print

Inside a company residence at the Ogurawa settlement, a dining table and chairs sit undisturbed under a layer of dust. The chairs are pushed in, or pulled back at angles, as though whoever sat there simply did not return. The walls have deteriorated around the furniture. The floor shows years of accumulated grime. Natural light reaches into the room, falling across surfaces that have not been touched in a long time. The Ogurawa settlement sits in the upper Nakatsugawa valley in Chichibu, Saitama Prefecture, accessed via a mountain road approximately 43 kilometres west of Chichibu Station. The community was built by the Nichitsu group to house the workforce of Chichibu Mine, the sole significant metal mine in Saitama Prefecture, and one of the most mineralogically diverse ore deposits in Japan. At its height in the 1960s, the settlement supported a school that enrolled 274 students in 1959, a clinic, a post office, a cinema and dance hall, a public bathhouse, and a general store. The company built and owned almost every element of the community's civic life. Metal mining ceased in 1978. From that point, families left steadily. School enrolment fell from 160 students in 1972 to 7 in 1984, when the Ogurawa Elementary and Middle School closed in March of that year. The general store ceased trading in 2003. The last permanent resident left in September 2006, leaving the settlement classified as uninhabited. The company housing was stratified by rank: tiled-roof residences for managers, concrete apartment blocks with shared facilities for workers. The residence in this photograph is among those that have stood empty since depopulation. It sustained further damage in February 2014, when record snowfall caused structural collapses across parts of the settlement. Chichibu Mine itself continued crystalline limestone extraction until 30 September 2022, when operations finally ceased after more than 400 years of intermittent mining on the site. The dining table predates that closure by decades. Photographed in 2016.

04 FROM THE FIELD NOTES

Inside a residence at the Ogurawa settlement, a dining table and chairs remain exactly where they were left. Dust covers every surface. The settlement housed the families of Chichibu Mine workers during its peak decades, when the narrow Nakatsugawa valley supported a self-contained community with a school, clinic, post office, bathhouse, and shops. When metal extraction ceased in 1978, families began leaving. The last permanent resident departed in September 2006. This table records the life that was once gathered around it.

Brett Patman

The series

Nichitsu Mining Village

2016 · 36 photographs

Nichitsu Mining Village - formally Ogura-sawa settlement - sits in the mountains above Chichibu in Saitama Prefecture. The mine was first worked around 1600 by the Kai Takeda clan, Takeda Shingen's house, who panned gold and placer gold from its streams. In 1765 the Edo-period polymath Hiraga Gennai entered the valley to mine gold; his residence, Gennai-kyo, survives as a Chichibu City historic site. Yanase Trading bought the mine in 1910 and added iron-ore extraction. Nichitsu Mining Development took over in 1937 and reorganised as Nichitsu Mining Industry in 1950. By the 1960s the mine produced 500,000 tonnes a year of zinc, magnetite and over 140 mineral species - the most varied mine in Japan - supporting a town of 2,000 to 2,400 people with two schools, a hospital, a fire department, a cinema and a post office. Metal mining stopped in 1978; quartz sand began in 1969; crystalline limestone carried on until 30 September 2022, when Nitchitsu Co. closed the operation entirely.

View all in this series →

05 SIZE GUIDE

Print sizes

The anatomy view shows what this finish is as a physical object: paper margin, mat band, frame depth, acrylic profile. The comparison strip shows how each size sits relative to the others at true scale. Click a size or a finish to update both.