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| Yanagi Shop: Yotsuya | |||
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Approaching the exterior of this utilitarian building tucked away in Yotsuya, you may wonder why on earth Sori Yanagi would choose such humble and unassuming surroundings. For this is the only directly managed shop selling his charmingly simple and elegant tableware and furniture. (Yanagi's Butterfly Stool, the winner of the Gold Medal at the Milan Triennale, has been a design classic for nearly half a century.) Perhaps it's all about the philosophy of the world-famous designer - "let the work speak for itself".
Inside, the "shop" is barely the size of a broom cupboard, with a few shelves displaying pretty much the entire Yanagi catalogue. The kindly office workers behind the desk will pull out anything that isn't on display from the stock room. It can become packed pretty quickly with reverential customers examining the black wood-handled cutlery, the curvacious stainless steel kettle or the chunky Nakai kiln earthenware. If you're not careful you could trip over the famous stool (Y36,750 inc tax) - exhibited in the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the Louvre in Paris - which casually occupies a small patch of the floor. Now in his 80s and still working, Yanagi has become a darling of the modern style generation. In 2003 a whole special bilingual issue of the Japanese design magazine Brutus Casa was devoted to his life and work, with foreign designers and shop owners queuing up to wax lyrical about Yanagi items and his design philosophy. In this Yanagi takes his cue from his father Soetsu, the founder of the Japan Folk Crafts Museum in Shibuya, a showcase for Mingei - crafts made for daily use by ordinary people. If you're impressed by the small scale beauty of Yanagi's designs you might also want to search out some of his larger projects which include bridges, tunnels - even highways. The tidal wave-like soundproofing fence at the Tokyo tollgate of the Tomei Expressway is a Yanagi project dating from 1980, while on a wall at Yokohama subway station you can catch his sculptural green mermaid swimming through a churning blue sea. by Simon Richmond |
Yanagi Shop
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