The Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library at Yale is currently showing Textured Stories: The Chirimen Books of Modern Japan, The exhibition explores Japanese crêpe-paper books, known as chirimen-bon, which feature handmade pages filled with stories drawn chiefly from Japanese fairy… Continue reading
Tea is nothing but the following: first boil the water. Then add the tea. And drink it. That is everything you have to know.’ These seemingly simple instructions by tea master Sen no Rikyu (1522–1591) refer to both the formalised… Continue reading
Surimono are a distinctive form of Japanese colour woodblock prints that emerged between the late 18th and mid-19th centuries. Surimono literally translates to ‘printed things’ or ‘something rubbed’ (referring to the way a Japanese print is made by rubbing paper… Continue reading
The world of contemporary Japanese ceramics is brimming with dynamic approaches to the medium of clay with the use of vibrant colours, textured surfaces, and gravity-defying shapes. The current exhibition of new Japanese ceramics at the Asian Art Museum in… Continue reading
Opening last October after more than a decade of preparation, the Enoura Observatory is an installation of gallery spaces, performance stages, a traditional teahouse, two ancient gates and many, yet-more ancient stones, constructed in the words of the founder ‘as… Continue reading
Unfortunately, eccentrics are ofttimes underrated – or overlooked. Socially, they can be considered unstable and therefore, somehow, unacceptable – that is if one is under the thumb of bourgeois morality. In the American South, however, family eccentrics are a point… Continue reading
Unfortunately, eccentrics are ofttimes underrated – or overlooked. Socially, they can be considered unstable and therefore, somehow, unacceptable – that is if one is under the thumb of bourgeois morality. In the American South, however, family eccentrics are a… Continue reading
Arguably, a thoroughly unexpected celebrity became entranced by Japanese cloisonné – Rudyard Kipling. He describes his reaction to seeing the cloisonné process like this: ‘It is one thing to read of cloisonné making, but quite another to watch it being… Continue reading
Arguably, a thoroughly unexpected celebrity became entranced by Japanese cloisonné – Rudyard Kipling. He describes his reaction to seeing the cloisonné process like this: ‘It is one thing to read of cloisonné making, but quite another to watch it being… Continue reading
In the 1970s and early 1980s, Sotheby’s in New York and the auction houses in the UK and in Europe sold mostly late Utagawa School prints by Kuniyoshi (excluding his early works), Kunisada I aka Toyokuni III, Kunisada II and… Continue reading