Mingei

Mingei (民芸, short for minshūteki kōgei, 'folk craft') is the philosophy and movement developed in Japan from the mid-1920s by the aesthete Yanagi Sōetsu together with the potters Hamada Shōji and Kawai Kanjirō. It celebrated ordinary crafts and functional utensils - bowls, dyeing, trays, farm tools - made by anonymous craftspeople, as against the 'higher' fine arts admired in a rapidly westernizing Japan. Beauty, Yanagi argued, arises from use, honesty of material and the repetition of the hand: the humble, the irregular, the unselfconscious. The movement built museums, sustained country workshops (Hamada made Mashiko a pottery centre) and reached the West through Bernard Leach, whose Leach Pottery joined Japanese and English studio traditions. Mingei was both a reaction against industrial modernization and a durable design ethic whose influence runs through modern ceramics and craft worldwide.

Defining characteristics

• Humble, useful objects - bowls, jars, trays, cloth - made for everyday use
• Honest materials and visible hand-work; irregularity left unhidden
• Anonymous or unassuming authorship: the craftsperson over the named artist
• Simple, sturdy forms with restrained decoration drawn from local tradition
• Natural glazes and textures - ash, iron, straw - valued over polish

Key figures

• Yanagi Sōetsu (1889-1961) — Philosopher who founded and named the movement in the mid-1920s
• Hamada Shōji (1894-1978) — Potter who made Mashiko a craft centre; Living National Treasure from 1955
• Kawai Kanjirō (1890-1966) — Potter of independent kilns and expressive glazes
• Bernard Leach (1887-1979) — British potter who carried mingei into Western studio pottery

Example works

• Ame-glazed tea bowl with combed band (W.A. Ismay Collection, York Art Gallery) — Shōji Hamada (n.d.)

Sources

• Mingei - Wikipedia encyclopedia

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