Life in urban Japan is so suffused with artificial, factory-produced materials that the soul can cry out for the natural. We drift in a sea of plastic and concrete, drinking from polyethylene terephthalate bottles and living in egg cartons sided with ersatz brick.
The logics of cost and convenience justify this fog of the synthetic, but happily any fears that mass utilitarianism is snuffing out good old-fashioned craftsmanship in design for daily living are dispelled by the research of Ori Koyama. Her gorgeously illustrated "Inspired Shapes: Contemporary Designs for Japan's Ancient Crafts" is proof that many of this country's artisans remain at once rooted in tradition and strikingly audacious.
An interior stylist, Koyama was raised in Tokyo by sake brewers, growing up among old vats and brewing implements that hadn't changed in generations. As an adult she rediscovered a fascination with watching human hands manipulate tools to produce works of craftsmanship and innovation. This crystallized when she happened upon an exhibition featuring a high-backed chair of black and tan susutake bamboo, darkened by long exposure to cookfires in an old Japanese home. Captivated, she acquired the chair and went on to research the movement it represented: Japanese craftsmanship informed by traditional techniques but in full embrace of contemporary aesthetics.