England gave the world the Windsor chair, but it was the city of Matsumoto in central Nagano Prefecture that reinvented it for Japan.
Of course, such a universal masterpiece only needed a few tweaks. A coat of traditional Japanese lacquer here, a lowering of the seat there, a substitution of Japanese cherry birch for elm wood, and the centuries- old British favorite was set to become a Japanese hit.
So I was told on a recent afternoon by Mototami Ikeda, grandson of Sanshiro Ikeda, the man who brought about this furniture revolution. We were standing in the same attic workshops where Sanshiro refined his masterpiece 65 years ago, and where artisans still make similar chairs by hand. Though the factory, called Matsumoto Mingei Kagu (Matsumoto Folkcraft Furniture), is just half an hour from my house, I had barely been aware of it — or of the thriving arts and crafts scene that has grown up around the factory and today draws buyers and browsers from all over Japan.