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16FTWeekend

17 November/18 November 2018

House Home

Hiroshima sideboard by Naoto Fukasawa
for Maruni Wood Industry, from £3,324,
viaduct.co.uk

Minimalist
effortCC01 chair byKensaku Oshiro,from €1,115+VAT,oshiro.it
Michael Anastassiades inspire him —Sakashita’s lights are a fusion of the two.
“I want something between east andwest,” he says.
Sakashita’s pieces have already founda customer base in Europe. However, forsome of his peers, stimulating interestin overly showy design back home is adifferent matter. The furniture anddesign market is distinct. Japanese
homes are typically tiny, so every itemof furniture must serve a purpose. People mostly rent, discouraging a cultureof home improvement, and they tend

Interiors | Pairing craftsmanship with a designer’s
flair is helping rejuvenate the Japanese furniturescene both at home and abroad. By Tom MorrisS

ubtlety has defined Japanesedesign throughout the 20thcentury: the household brandMuji prides itself on being
unbranded, while mingei —one of the most important modern
design movements in Japan — celebrated folk art and “the unknowncraftsman”. The key tenets of Japanesedesign known the world over — a keenness for natural materials, pared-backminimalism and an exceptional level ofcraftsmanship — do not shout nor lendthemselves to becoming household
names or iconic pieces.
This, however, is changing. With theTokyo 2020 Olympics on the horizon
and Japan House, a series of cultural
exhibition centres recently opened inLondon, Los Angeles and São Paulo,
there is a fresh impetus to showcase abroader range of Japanese culture to theworld. In its wake stands a dynamic generation of designers who are evolving
Japanese style. Last month they were onshow at Designart Tokyo, a new annual
festival dedicated to highlighting local
design and art. Like past breakthroughdesigners Shiro Kuramata (famous forwobbly cabinets and a chair made ofglass in the 1970s) and Oki Sato of studio
Nendo (who, in 2010, created a chairthat looks like it floats), they demonstrate the power of fusing Japanese
craftsmanship with innovative design.
“I wanted to invent a new style for‘made in Japan’, ” says designer Hitoshi
Makino, describing Uscita, the furniture
brand that he set up this summer.
Makino was senior designer at the Milan
design firm Lissoni Associati for sevenyears, before he returned to Tokyo in
2015. His collection of chairs and tables
pairs a sleek aesthetic more typical of
Italian design with quality craftsmanship: they are produced by a traditional
workshop in the carpentry capital
Asahikawa in northern Japan. One
chandelier is half-made by gold-leaf
craftsmen in Kyoto, while its frame ismade in Veneto, Italy. “I wanted to use
these techniques in a way that would
mix cultures,” says Makino. “We callthis wa, or harmony.”
Textile designer Yuri Himuro, whowon Elle Decor Japan’s annual Young
Design Talent 2018 award last month,also bonds craftsmanship with a subtle,

While interiors themselves
are traditionally beautiful,
there is a generaldisinterest in ‘design’ itself
Bloom Blanket by Yuri Himuro,h-m-r.net — Kohsuke Higuchi

Arc table, from ¥65,700 ($577), and armchair,¥173,000, by Uscita, uscita.info — Yusuke Kawagoe

confident glamour. Like much of thearts in Japan, her blankets are inspiredby the natural world; yet hers aresupersized, colourful and decidedly
unminimal. They are made in Gifu
prefecture, one of the textile capitalsof Japan.
Baku Sakashita does the same withhis enchanting lighting. He graduatedfrom Swiss design school ECAL lastyear and creates dangling lanterns
out of semi-transparent washi
paper and stainless-steel wire on
brass bases. The paper lanterns ofIsamu Noguchi from the 1950s and thepopular brass and glass globe lamps ofLondon-based contemporary designer

to not entertain at home. Over time,
this has trained a mindset that prefers
reliable, functional and perhaps slightly
ordinary furniture. It has fostered asubtle, understated approach to interior
design compared with how homes
are decorated elsewhere in the world.
While interiors themselves are traditionally beautiful, with good wood,tatami mats and plenty of handcraftedpieces, there is a general disinterest in“design” itself.
Hokuto Ando is a Central Saint Martins-trained designer and co-founder ofstudio We+, whose pieces sell at Spazio
Rossana Orlandi, a major gallery inMilan. “We don’t have much of a market