The Mingei

The Mingei movement "movement of folk art" is a Japanese artistic movement, mainly pottery and ceramics, inspired by the English Arts & Crafts movement. Established in 1925 in Japan for the revaluation of craft from a long tradition, this style is also a reaction to the growing urban planning of the country, advocating the revival of traditions and beauty in everyday objects, made of ceramics, woods, lacquers, metalworks and textiles.

"It must be modest but not trashy, inexpensive but not fragile. Dishonesty, perversity, luxury, that is what Mingei crafts must avoid at the highest point: what is natural, sincere, safe, simple, these are the characteristics of Mingei. "

The Idea of Mingei (1933), Sōetsu Yanagi

Sori Yanagi, son of Soetsu Yanagi, has dedicated himself to the Spirit of Mingei. Since 1940 he combines the modern approach to design with the functionalist teachings of the Bauhaus, he takes a look more and more careful to the spiritual and human message from his father.

Starting from 1948, he creates for bigger customer ranges tea and coffee sets in white porcelain, series of stainless steel bowls, furniture ... Avoiding any decor, he favors simple shapes that seem naturally designed and modeled, using new materials and contemporary production and assembly techniques. The Butterfly chair (designed in 1953) will become a design icon.

His designs announce those of contemporary designers such as Naoto Fukasawa and Jasper Morrison, attached to the notion of "Super Normal" to refer to objects whose ordinariness was simply imposed.

After the war, he organized the designer profession in Japan and establishes international relations, particularly with Charles Eames. But he never ceased to point out, as his father had, and even after he became president of Mingeikan (Japan’s Museum of Mingei Art), the beauty of anonymous design.

Modernism gave absolute power to the Ego, whereas for designers it is not about expressing an individuality but wanting to link interior and exterior, to find a common relationship between oneself and others. It is the material influence an object or a space that causes this relationship.