Screenshot of Nendo Design Studio Works

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In: Decorative & Applied Arts

Nendo is a Japanese design company founded by Sato Oki in 2002 that works globally on design projects. In Tokyo, the first office was built. The second office was opened in Milan in 2005. Over the course of 18 years of establishment, the business works with different brands and has received numerous awards. With subtle influences from Japanese and Scandinavian aesthetics, Nendo is recognised for its simple and minimalist style.Read More →

Kakemono Scroll featured image

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In: Art and Design, Decorative & Applied Arts, Decorative Arts Dictionary, Design Dictionary

Through the lens of Kakemono, we not only appreciate Japanese artistry but also understand the underpinnings of the culture that has given birth to it. The fluidity and grace of these hanging scrolls stand testament to the rich tapestry of Japan’s historical and artistic legacy.Read More →

Yohji Yamamoto featured image in black and white

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In: Designers, Fashion Designers

Yohji Yamamoto fashion is exemplified by ease and wearability. READ MORE about this innovative radically different Japanese Designer.Read More →

Hiroshi Yamano - featured image

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In: Decorative & Applied Arts, Designers, Glassmaker

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 →

Kikkoman Soy Sauce Bottle designed by Kenji Ekuan

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In: Decorative & Applied Arts, Industrial Design

Kenji Ekuan, born in 1929, was a pioneer in Japanese industrial design, blending tradition and modernity in various products. Kenji Ekuan, president of Japan Industrial Designers Association, ICSID, and ICSID, influenced design with philosophical approach, blending tradition and modernity.Read More →

Hiroshi Awatsuji featured image

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In: Art and Design, Designers, Graphic Designers, Textile Designer

Hiroshi Awatsuji (1929- 1995) was a Japanese textile and graphic designer: born in Kyoto. He was considered the first Japanese textile designer to be recognised for contemporary design rather than for traditional art and craft. The main characteristic of his work was over sized motifs.Read More →

Japonisme style of decorative arts

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In: Decorative & Applied Arts, Decorative Arts Dictionary, Design Dictionary

A French term used to describe a variety of European borrowings from Japanese art was Japonisme.

With the opening of trade with Japan following the expedition of the American Commodore Matthew Perry in 1853. The interest in Japanese art in the West, particularly in France, had started to develop. The artist Félix Bracquemond, a friend of the Goncourt brothers, were among the first interpreters of the style.Read More →

Vegetable Dish 1955Designed by Masakichi Awashima

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In: Designers, Glassmaker

After studying design at the Japan Art School in Tokyo, Awashima worked for artisan Kozo Kagami, who had studied Western glass methods in Germany from 1935 to 1946. Read More →

Naoto Fukasawa featured image

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In: Designers, Furniture Designer, Industrial Designers

Fukasawa is well-known for his designs and design theories, endowed with a quiet strength that represents people’s dreams and expectations. Conveying them using such terms as “design dissolving in behaviour”, “centre of consciousness”, “normality”, “outline”, and “archetype”, he continues to put these philosophies into practice in his designs.Read More →

Domestic Control Unit designed by Makio Hasuike

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In: Designers, Industrial Designers

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 →

Kazuhide Takahama featured image

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In: Designers, Furniture Designer, Industrial Designers

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 →

Japanese flower arranging featured image

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In: Art and Design, Decorative & Applied Arts, Design Inspiration, Design News

The arrangements of flowers offer far more than a pattern employing flowers and foliage neatly distributed in an appropriate container.
Not only is it a form of relaxation, but flower arrangement reawakens an awareness of nature upon which a philosophy – that of restraint and simplicity — is based.Read More →

Hello Kitty featured image

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In: Decorative & Applied Arts, Graphic Design

When the Japanese company Sanrio first launched “Hello Kitty” in 1974 as a greetings card for children, this patented brand cartoonlike image of a cat (a lucky emblem in Japan) was applied to over 1,000 products ranging from domestic appliances, computer keyboards, personal stereos, and credit cards to sweet wrappers, T-shirts, and eyelash curlersRead More →

Akari Lamp featured image

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In: Decorative & Applied Arts, Design News, Furniture Design, Interior design

Isamu Noguchi designed the first of his lamps to be produced by traditional construction methods in Gifu, Japan, known for its manufacture of lanterns and parasols made from mulberry bark paper and bamboo. Akari is handcrafted with washi paper from the inside bark of the mulberry tree and bamboo ribbing stretched across sculptural moulded wood shapes.Read More →

Fujina pottery example

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In: Ceramic Art and Design, Decorative & Applied Arts, Decorative Arts Dictionary, Design Dictionary

Fujina pottery is made at Matsue, Shimane. 19th-century products include bluish-green tea bowls and white, yellow, or bluish-green domestic pottery. Later urban work promotes folk art.Read More →

Junichi Arai textile featured image

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In: Designers, Textile Designer

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.

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Black Wire Chair by Oki Santo

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In: Designers, Furniture Designer, Industrial Designers

Oki Sato, a Canadian-born Japanese designer, was born in 1977 in Toronto, Canada. He received his M.Arch. from Waseda University, Tokyo, in 2002 and established his design studio, Nendo, in 2002. Nendo is renowned for its minimalist products that challenge user preconceptions of what an object should be or look like. The Sawaru lamp is a superb illustration of the studio’s capacity to reimagine the objects in our environment.Read More →

Set of eight chairs by Arata Isozaki featured image

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In: Designers, Industrial Designers, The Architect Designer

Arata Isozaki is a Japanese architect, urban designer, and theorist from Ōita. He was awarded the RIBA Gold Medal in 1986 and the Pritzker Architecture Prize in 2019.Read More →

Hayama Bar Cabinet by Partricia Urquiola

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In: Design News

Featuring the same oblique form and lacquered finish as the sideboard, the bar cabinet sports cannete-effect doors, a mirrored interior that gives greater depth to the space, a glass shelf for bar accessories, and two drawers and two side compartments, which are perfect for storing cocktail paraphernalia.Read More →

Osamu Tezuka featured image

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In: Art and Design, Decorative & Applied Arts, Designers, The Artist Designer

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 →