Tradition
Mingei
Japan · 20th century
Beauty of use. The hand of the unknown craftsman.
A philosopher looked at humble rice bowls and saw a new way of understanding beauty.
In the 1920s, Yanagi Sōetsu was studying Korean Yi dynasty ceramics when he had a revelation. The beauty he found in these everyday vessels—made quickly, without self-consciousness, for use—was different from the beauty of fine art. He called it mingei, the 'art of the people.' Yanagi's idea was radical: true beauty emerged not from individual genius but from the unselfconscious repetition of traditional forms. He gathered a circle of potters—Shoji Hamada, Kanjiro Kawai, Bernard Leach—who would transform this philosophy into a movement.
What could you make if you weren't trying to make art?
Techniques
- Traditional methods
- Local materials
- Repetition
- Functional forms