Handmade in Japan

Author: Irwin Wong / Gestalten
Publisher: Gestalten
Year of publication: 2020
Language: English
Binding: hardcover
Number of pages: 320
Dimensions: 23 x 29.5 cm
ISBN: 978-3-89955-992-7

Irwin Wong is a photographer and documentary filmmaker from Australia who has lived and worked in Tokyo for many years. His work focuses on photographing traditional Japanese craftspeople, their studios, and disappearing manual techniques.

Gestalten is a publishing house focused on producing visually and editorially sophisticated publications about design, architecture, and visual culture.

The book presents detailed profiles of dozens of Japanese craftspeople from a wide range of fields, including blacksmithing, knife-making, woodworking, washi paper production, and the natural indigo dyeing of textiles. It includes personal interviews, descriptions of the historical development of individual fields in specific prefectures, and large-format photographs by Irwin Wong capturing the working environments, tools used, and the production process itself.

The book offers a comprehensive view of Japanese craft culture through the people who keep it alive. It shows the real hard work, materials, and technical precision on which many of the brands in our selection are also built. Specifically, you will find, for example, the work of Daizo Mitsukawa, who makes traditional nokogiri hand saws. There is also a chapter on urushi lacquer, which forms the basis of the lacquerware craft practiced by the Tsuchinao Shikki workshop, appears on the handles of our knives, and serves as a key component for repairing ceramics in the kintsugi set.

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