Helicopters. Whirlybirds. Whirligigs. No matter what you call them, samara keys, or simply samaras, are small, flat, and dry winged fruit (seed pods) that grow on trees like maples, ash, and elm.

Because of their wing shape, they spin through the air (auto-rotate) when they fall from the canopy, flying on the wind to reseed further from their parent tree.

When I was growing up, we had two purple hopseed bushes in our backyard. I spent countless hours playing with my Hot Wheels and green army men between those trees, hands in the dirt, head in the clouds, feet from my house but worlds away in my thoughts.

Like samara-bearing trees, hopseed bushes have papery winged fruits (seed pods) that float in the air as they’re dropped.

Those reddish sky spinners of my childhood inspired a lifelong fascination with dreamy things that float on the wind. The nine mobiles in this series are my homage to those memories.

Each of the mobiles in this collection is truly one-of-a-kind. There is only one of each available, and when it sells, that design will be permanently retired from my studio.

Each mobile in this series draws inspiration from Sanzo Wada’s six-volume color study, Haishoku Soukan (配色総監). Created in the 1930s, Wada sought to highlight traditional Japanese approaches to color, which differed significantly from Western approaches at the time.

In 2011, Seigensha - an independent Japanese publisher - published A Dictionary of Color Combinations with 348 of Wada’s colorways.

In each listing, I’ve included a photo of the colorway selected, and its reference number in the dictionary.

Exactly that: a story. Each of the mobiles in this series has a short title (i.e., the name of a tree that produces samaras). But the true title of each mobile reads more like a short story and can be found in the listing description. Bonus points if you can memorize even just one.

Each mobile in this series has a very intentional palette—unique unto itself, but also designed to create a colorway coherency with the series as a whole.

If you’d like to customize colors, I encourage you to check out other mobiles in my shop.