Unknown Craftsman The: A Japanese Insight Into Beauty
A Japanese Insight into Beauty
$69.43
- Paperback
232 pages
- Release Date
1 July 2017
Summary
This book challenges the conventional ideas of art and beauty. What is the value of things made by an anonymous craftsman working in a set tradition for a lifetime? What is the value of handwork? Why should even the roughly lacquered rice bowl of a Japanese farmer be thought beautiful? The late Soetsu Yanagi was the first to fully explore the traditional Japanese appreciation for “objects born, not made.”
Mr. Yanagi sees folk art as a manifestation of the essential world from which ar…
Book Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781568365206 |
|---|---|
| ISBN-10: | 1568365209 |
| Author: | Soetsu Yanagi, Bernard Leach |
| Publisher: | Kodansha America, Inc |
| Imprint: | Kodansha America, Inc |
| Format: | Paperback |
| Number of Pages: | 232 |
| Release Date: | 1 July 2017 |
| Weight: | 668g |
| Dimensions: | 24mm x 241mm x 183mm |
What They're Saying
Critics Review
“Yanagi pinpoints qualities of ‘true’ beauty with an authority that hardly allows us to differ. As does Solzhenitsyn, he feels that beauty is a real entity and not different from truth.” —Craft Horizons“This book is a quiet manifesto for the preservation and enhancement of crafts.” —Washington Post
About The Author
Soetsu Yanagi
S?ETSU YANAGI was born in Tokyo in 1889 and graduated from the literature department of the Tokyo Imperial University in 1913, majoring in psychology. Proficient in English and with a deep feeling for art, while still a student Mr. Yanagi became associated with the Shirakaba (“Silver Birch”) literary group, to which he was partly responsible for interpreting Western art to Japan.
In 1921, he completed the organization of a Korean folkcraft museum in Seoul, and, in 1936, the present Japan Folkcraft Museum in Tokyo was completed through his efforts.
Mr. Yanagi traveled widely in the Orient, Europe, and America. In 1929 he lectured at Harvard University for one year. In Japan, sometimes in the company of the potters Kanjir? Kawai, Sh?ji Hamada, and Bernard Leach, he sought out anonymous craftsman of all kinds throughout the country and encouraged their work. He also wrote prolifically and profoundly on all aspects of aesthetics, finding his inspiration in Japanese and Oriental folkcraft and folk culture. His personal collection of folkcrafts is the nucleus of the Japan Folkcraft Museum collection. Mr. Yanagi died in Tokyo in 1961.
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