Hello Kitty Expands with 3D Series from Kids First & Amazon Kids+

Kids First today announced its first-ever collaboration with Amazon Kids+ on an original children’s program based on Hello Kitty. The two companies are creating a new episodic series, Hello Kitty: Super Style! , which will bring lifestyle brand Sanrio’s global pop culture icon to life in premium 3D animation.

Ukiyo-e, Pictures of the floating world

Ukiyo-e, translated as “pictures of the floating world,” has captured wisps of the natural beauty that one sees every day. These prints are a record of 18th and 19th-century life in Japan and had a profound effect on the great Western artists of the time.Read More →
Hiroshi Yamano – Exquisite Japanese Glass Designs

Kiroshi Yamano is a Japanese Glass Designer. He studied at the Tokyo Glass Crafts Institute to 1984 and Rochester Institute of Technology, Rochester, New York, to 1989. Read More →
Introducing Kazuhide Takahama (b.1930) Japanese Designer

At the X Milan Triennale exhibition in 1954, he met the furniture manufacturer, Dino Gavina, who subsequently invited Takahama to work for him in Italy. Takahama’s first design for Gavina was the geometrically severe Naeko sofa-bed (1957). Read More →
Ikko Tanaka (1930 -2002) 🇯🇵 Graphic Design blend of East and West

Ikko Tanaka was a Leading Graphic Designer in Japan. He had an enormous impact on the post-war visual culture in Japan.Read More →
Toshiyuki Kita (b.1942) Japanese Furniture and Interior Designer

He set up his own design office in Osaka in 1964; in 1969, he began designing furniture for Italian and Japanese firms; he collaborated with Silvio Coppola, Giotto Stoppino, and Bepi Fiori for Bernini. He is best known for the 1980 Wink articulated armchair produced by Cassina, which took four years to design; Read More →
Katsuji Wakisaka ( b.1944 ) 🗻 Japanese Textile Designer

Katsuji Wakisaka is a Japanese textile designer. Between 1960 -1963 he studied textile design in Kyoto.Read More →
Isamu Noguchi (1904–1988) American sculptor and designer.

Isamu Noguchi (1904–1988), was an American sculptor and designer. He was born in Los Angeles and professionally active in New York. He was influential and well-received in the twentieth century. He produced sculptures, gardens, furniture and lighting designs, ceramics, architecture, and set designs throughout his lifetime of creative experimentation. His work, both subtle and bold, traditional and modern, set a new standard for reintegrating the arts.Read More →
Yoshitomo Nara (b.1959) Japanese Artist and Designer

Nara grew up in Aomori Prefecture, Japan, about 300 miles north of the Tochigi Prefecture. His exposure to Western music on the American military radio station Far East Network in Honshu influenced his artistic imagination early. Later, he would provide cover art for bands including Shonen Knife, R.E.M., and Bloodthirsty Butchers.Read More →
Suehari Fukami (b.1947) Japanese Studio Potter

Suehari Fukami (b.1947) is a Japanese studio potter based in Kyoto. He works in the bluish-white porcelain known in Japanese as seihakuji, developed in the Song dynasty JINGDEZEN wares. Read More →
Netsuke – Small Mythological carvings from Japan

Netsuke: A little Japanese sculptured item of ivory, wood, or porcelain that ranges in height and width from one-half to three inches. Mythological images, flowers, animals, gods, and goddesses are among the carvings. Netsuke pieces were initially employed as toggles in the fourteenth century. A cord was slipped under and over the obi and through a hole in the netsuke.Read More →
Listening to Stone (paperback) – Art and Life of Isamu Noguchi

A master of what he called “the sculpturing of space,” Isamu Noguchi was an essential figure for modern public art. Noguchi, born to an American mother and a Japanese father, never felt at home anywhere and spent his life creating identities through his sculptures, monuments, and gardens. Read More →
Poster for Nikon (1957) by Yusaku Kamekura

Yusaku Kamekura’s poster emphasises the brilliance and clarity attained with the Nikon lens and the technical perfection of his client’s camera by using brilliant optical patterns and powerful, white letter-forms against an intensely dark background. Read More →
Susumu Ilkuta Japanese Ceramicist

He worked as a fashion designer in Tokyo. In 1958, he moved to New York at the invitation of hatter Lilly Daché. He studied ceramics in night classes in New York. In 1973, he returned to Japan, where he studied with Kohbei and painted on unfired porcelain.Read More →
Soichiro Sasakura (b.1949) Japanese Glassware Designer

He worked for Sasaki Glass, for which he designed the 1988 San Marino glassware range.Read More →
Shoji Hamada (1894 – 1978) Japanese Potter

Shoji Hamada, along with Bernard Leach, was one of the key figures in the development of studio pottery in the 20th century. His influence both in England and the US as well as in his native Japan cannot be underestimated. Read More →
Junichi Arai (1932 – 2017) Japanese textile designer and producer

Junichi Arai (1932 – 2017) was a Japanese textile designer and producer born in Kiryu, Gunma. As the sixth generation of a mill-owning family, Arai grew up with fabrics being woven for obis and kimonos. He held traditional weaving methods in high regard and the skills that only the human hand can have in the art of fabric making. Read More →
Black Wire Chair by Oki Sato

Oki Santo designed this chair; it was a part of a series called Thin Black Lines. The series includes a chair and clothes rack intended to appear as sketches in the air or calligraphy symbols. Thin black lines like the traces of sketches drawn in the air made transparent surfaces and volumes appear, which we assigned practical functions. The outlines remained after simplifying paintings of plants and animals. Read More →
Etsuko Nishi (b.1955) Japanese Glass Designer

Etsuko Nishi is a Japanese Glass Designer. She is a leading expert in pâte de verre, one of the oldest and most difficult glass-making forms. The desired shape is first made of clay, which is used as the basis for the mould. The glass powder is then mixed with a special type of paste, and the mixture is then placed in the mould and then fired.Read More →
Osamu Tezuka (1928 – 1989) Japanese manga artist and cartoonist

OSAMU TEZUKA, who was revered as the “god of manga,” watched Bambi eighty times, until he had memorised every frame, and dreamed of equaling or surpassing Disney realism in his own animation.Read More →
Makio Hasuike Japanese (b.1938) Japanese Industrial Designer

Hasuike founded his firm in Milan after studying architecture and industrial design in Tokyo and working for Seiko for a year. He has designed for various well-known brands, including Gaggia coffee machines, Panasonic electronic items, Villeroy & Boch sanitary ware and tableware, Grand Gourmet kitchen knives (1994), and WMF cookware. Read More →