Japanese Industrial Crafts

“…life for art’s sake…”

The Winter Equinox.  Many people in the UK have been waiting for this day—the shortest day after which each one becomes a little longer.

Christmas Day is fast approaching and the New Year is just a few more days away.  For many people around the world this is a season of merry making and, for some, a time to relax and do some reading on the subject of Japanese crafts perhaps.  I do hope so.

A few years ago I was alerted to the existence of a series of books on many aspects of Japanese culture.  The series was published in English by the Board of Tourist Industry, Japanese Government Railways in a handy size clearly aimed at the tourist market.  There are forty volumes in the original series first published between 1934 and the early part of the 1940s.

The original volumes are particularly appealing.  The printed pages with photographs are excellent for the time.  The covers are an absolute delight, made from a matt coloured paper with an attached coloured illustration and a dust jacket of glassine—like a thin tracing paper.  The covers are unmistakably Japanese.  A number of hardback volumes were subsequently published in the 1950s roughly following the same format but looking far less “Japanese”.

It is the introduction to the volume on Japanese Industrial Arts that I would like to present.  This volume was copyrighted and published in 1941and written by Seiichi Okuda (who seems to be 奥田誠一).

Please note that the way Japanese is now commonly written in roman letters has changed.  In this piece, bizyutu is now usually written as bijitsu.  Industrial arts are referred to as kôgei but these days this word is used as a general term for craft, although often referring to a repeatable craft item as well as studio craft.

Do feel free to pass on the address of this blog to anyone you think will be interested.  Or share it on a social media site.  Should you wish to leave a comment, please do so by clicking on the comment mark at the bottom left of this or any of the other posts.   If you have found this blog interesting, why not become a follower.  Thank you.

Exhibition Notice

HIKOJU MAKIE Exhibition~ Featuring work by MIWA KOMATSU

This makie panel was produce by Takashi Wakamiya, Makie by Ayano Konishi.

（483x383x30mm）Original drawing by Miwa Komatsu.

The exhibition runs from  6th~12th December 2017

 GINZA MITSUKOSHI DEPARTMENT STORE GALLERY 7F

Based on an original drawing by Ayano Konishi, this makie panal was produced by Takashi Wakamiya who heads Hikoju Makie and features the work of Miwa Komatsu.  The panel was also worked on by the woodcarver Arisa Oguro and the makie artist Ayano Konishi.

彦十蒔絵 若宮隆志展~Featuring 小松美羽~

彦十蒔絵の作品に加え、注目の現代アーティストとして国内外でめざましい活躍している小松美羽氏の神獣たちを、木彫作家 小黒アリサ氏、蒔絵師 小西 紋野氏らのコラボレーションで蒔絵作品として再現し、新たな命を吹き込んだ作品を製作しました。

＊当イベント写真は小松美羽氏の作品「幸せに生まれ、幸せに栄える」を漆芸の技術を駆使して製作しました（蒔絵漆芸額 483*383*30mm）。

製作：彦十蒔絵　　蒔絵担当：小西紋野

会期：2017年12月6日（水）～12日（火）

場所：銀座三越　7階　ギャラリー

Picturesque?

On Which the Eye Settles

The Picturesque movement that became fashionable in England and on Continental Europe during the latter part of the eighteenth and nineteenth century was something of a reaction against the much stricter principals employed within Neoclassicism—formality, proportion and a general sense of orderliness.

Picturesque meant exactly that—looking like something that might have originated in a “picture”.  This included landscape that might have been manipulated to look better, more pleasing to the eye and, of all things, might have included a ruin.  These were actually built to look like real ruins and used as compositional components in a landscape.

Sometimes called a folly—from the French word folie meaning “foolishness”—they were placed so as to enhance a landscape or vista and functioned as something rather romantic.

Although there is a slight air of romantic sentimentality about this ruined house standing close to the shore of the western coast of the Noto Peninsula, it is a long way from being a “folly”.  If anything it is a prop in a tragedy played out in real time, and simply one of the realities of life.

Inevitably it is something on which the eye settles.  Something about which we begin to imagine what might have happened to the family that lived in what must have been a house or real character and a home full of warmth and vitality.  Although a ruin, it is in the strangest of ways still picturesque.

Bill Tingey Photo © Copyright

Do feel free to pass on the address of this blog to anyone you think will be interested.  Or share it on a social media site.  Should you wish to leave a comment, please do so by clicking on the comment mark at the bottom left of this or any of the other posts.   If you have found this blog interesting, why not become a follower.  Thank you.