Bench Work table by Sakura Adachi | Campeggi

On:
In: Designers, Furniture Designer, Industrial Designers

Sakura Adachi is a highly acclaimed designer known for her unique fusion of conceptual thinking and expert craftsmanship. Born in Japan and educated in London, she established herself in Milan, collaborating with renowned design studios. Adachi gained international recognition at the Copenhagen International Furniture Fair and went on to establish her own design studio. Her collaborations with prestigious manufacturers and award-winning designs have solidified her status in the industry. As a professor and mentor, Adachi continues to inspire aspiring designers worldwide.Read More →

Yohji Yamamoto featured image in black and white

On:
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

On:
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

On:
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

On:
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 →

Kyohei Fujita Glassware

On:
In: Decorative & Applied Arts, Glass Design

Kyohei Fujita, born in 1921, gained exposure to glass art through apprenticeship with Toshichi Iwata. He developed a unique style and established the Japan Glass Artcrafts Association in 1972. Kyohei Fujita, a prominent Japanese artist, combines traditional Japanese elements with modern spirit, creating a lasting legacy in the international studio glass movement.Read More →

Vegetable Dish 1955Designed by Masakichi Awashima

On:
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

On:
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

On:
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

On:
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 →

Hello Kitty featured image

On:
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

On:
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 →

Junichi Arai textile featured image

On:
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.

Read More →

Kisho Kurokawa featured image

On:
In: Designers, Furniture Designer, The Architect Designer

In 1960, at the age of 26, he made his debut into the world as one of the founders of the Metabolism Movement.  Read More →

Set of eight chairs by Arata Isozaki featured image

On:
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 →

Osamu Tezuka featured image

On:
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 →

Shiro Kuramata featured image

On:
In: Designers, Furniture Designer, Interior Designer

Shiro Kuramata is a Japanese interior and furniture designer who has executed many interiors for Issey Miyake shops. His best-known pieces are his glass chair (1976) and homage to Hoffmann, Begin the Beguine (1985). His interior designs make use of expanded lattice metal and moiré effects. His portfolio includes furniture in irregular forms and large lamps made from milk-white plastic sheets heated in an electric kiln.Read More →

Shoji Hamada featured image

On:
In: Ceramacist, Design News, Designers

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 →

On:
In: Decorative & Applied Arts, Design News, Designers, Graphic Design, Graphic Designers, Typography Design

Ikko Tanaka was a Leading Graphic Designer in Japan. He had an enormous impact on the post-war visual culture in Japan.Read More →

Issey Miyake featured image

On:
In: Designers, Fashion Designers

Issey Miyake died on August 5, 2022, in a Tokyo hospital of liver cancer. He founded the Miyake Design Studio in 1970.Read More →