The Sori Yanagi Appreciation Society is the first publication outside Japan dedicated to Sori Yanagi (1915–2011), gathering more than 100 voices from the international design community to examine a body of work that remains quietly foundational to industrial design.
About This Book
Sori Yanagi spent a career doing something most designers only theorise about: holding modernist economy and traditional Japanese craft in genuine tension, producing objects that are both functionally unassuming and formally compelling. This book, initiated by designers Michael Marriott and Duncan Riches as the founding publication of the Sori Yanagi Appreciation Society, sets out to bring that legacy beyond Japan's borders for the first time. Anecdotal pieces sit alongside academic texts; drawings alongside photographs. The result is less monograph than collective act of attention — 100-plus contributors, designers, curators, artists, and critics among them, making the case for why Yanagi's industrial design still matters.
Key Features
- 256 pages of anecdotal and academic texts, drawings, photographs, and contributions from over 100 designers, curators, artists, and critics
- Founded and compiled by Michael Marriott and Duncan Riches
- Published by Rollo Press, 2011
What You'll Discover
- How Yanagi synthesised modernist simplicity with the material intelligence of traditional Japanese craft to produce products of quiet formal authority
- The range of voices — academic, anecdotal, creative — through which a designer's reputation is sustained and transmitted across generations
- Why Yanagi's work remained largely unknown outside Japan, and what the establishment of a dedicated society signals about the global circulation of design history
- The mechanics of collective publishing as an act of cultural advocacy, with over 100 contributors each bringing a distinct disciplinary lens
About the Author
The Sori Yanagi Appreciation Society was founded by Michael Marriott and Duncan Riches, who initiated this publication to bring wider international awareness to Yanagi's legacy. [Details available upon request]
Specifications
- Format: Softcover
- Pages: 256
- Dimensions: 13 x 20 cm
- Language: English
- ISBN: 9783906213538
- Publisher: Rollo Press
- Publication Date: 2011
Perfect For: Industrial designers, design historians, and practitioners with an interest in Japanese modernism, craft traditions, and the cultural transmission of design legacies.