About the Museum

The Lucky Cat Museum is the passion project of Micha Robertson and her husband Jaime. They moved to Cincinnati, Ohio from Oklahoma in 2001. Micha had always collected cat ephemera and Japanese and Asian art, but hadn’t been able to find any Lucky Cats in Oklahoma. She received her first Neko from her sister, Brenna (purchased from Tokyo Foods) and the second from the Cheviot Goodwill. Coincidentally, she and Brenna went to an anime/manga convention in California in late 2001, where she became a beta tester for Rinkya, one of the very first US companies to offer bidding services on Yahoo Japan Auctions. This opened the fortune feline floodgates, as it were, and the collection continues to grow.

In 2012, Micha’s friend Eva Clarke asked if she would be interested in sharing a space with her and Jenn Sczur at the Essex Art Studios. At the same time, the room at home that hadn’t quite become totally overwhelmed with the collection needed to be emptied for a family member. Eva and Jenn were cool with the idea of moving the collection into Micha’s third of the space. Cappel’s, her employer, provided many glass and acrylic display cases to get things organized.

In 2016, a space on the first floor of the Essex became available. It featured carpet, air-conditioning and complete walls (all things absent from the first space). The Museum moved downstairs and reopened with regular hours.

About the Essex Studios

The Essex building began in the 1920's as the Herschede Clock factory. In the 1950's it became Hamilton Tailoring Company. (You can still see snaps and pins ground into the flooring of the halls upstairs). With the 1990's decline of America's textile industry, the decision was made to convert the factory into artist spaces.