There is a small exhibition of Japanese kites and tops showing at the gallery. Both kites and tops were introduced into Japan in the Heian period (794-1185 AD) and reached a high point in their development in the Edo period (1603-1868), which was also the period of a general development of visual presentation and whose beginning was the age of the Japanese master, Korin, ``the most Japanese of all the artists of Japan''.

This period, when art and design blended in a grand harmony of ``balanced presentation'', is obviously most suited to the creation of the finest artefacts. Obviously, these do not survive in today's post Madam Butterfly Japan given to industrial mass production. And indeed, this sense of loss drove the theatrical Japanese writer, Yukio Mishima, to suicide. Edo Japan is lostnever to return.

The artefacts in the show all remind us of this truth. But unlike Mishima, while we can regret the passage of the grandeur of Edo art and decoration, we also see how these humble grandchildren of that art carry forward that tradition. They are proof that once something has been discovered by mankind, it is never entirely abandoned. And for those who practise the art of the mobile or the harmony of colours in motion, this exhibition provides an inspiration, even if it is a modest one.