Japanese Design: Artless Simplicity

About This Gallery

Soboku, which means simple, unsophisticated, and artless, applies to the traditional crafts that evolved in the countryside of Japan—objects that were made of natural materials and intended for everyday, practical use in the rustic life of common Japanese. The forms of these tools and vessels, and the methods of their design and manufacture, developed over centuries, becoming more or less standardized by the early Edo period (1615-1868). With the advent of industrialization, the survival of traditional Japanese crafts and the beauty of their inherent artlessness was threatened. Such objects were simply taken for granted and attracted little attention until the early part of the twentieth century when their aesthetic qualities were recognized and articulated by collector and arts activist Yanagi Soetsu (1889-1961), founder of the Japanese folk art (mingei) movement and author of the classic book, The Unknown Craftsman, which ascribes the purest form of Japanese aesthetics to those anonymous artisans who produced well-designed utilitarian objects.