Japan Folk Crafts Museum

Just as the English Arts and Crafts movement is still hugely relevant to us today, it is hard to read the exhibits in The Japan Folk Craft's museum as close to a century old. Furthermore, given that since the 1850s there's been consistent cross fertilisation between Western and Japanese culture, there are objects that are deceivingly familiar and yet utterly strange and foreign. A room full of extraordinary Japanese textiles, made with an entirely different logic will lead onto a room of ceramics that could pass as cutting edge, alongside chairs that you could picture William Morris sitting in. This is hardly surprising given how much aesthetically has been 'borrowed' or traded between Europe and Asia, however, perhaps it's seeing it from the Japanese perspective, although all of the elements are recognisable and seemingly readable, the overall result is truly refreshing with both assumed dates and origins blurred. Generally acknowledged as the founder of The Japanese Folk Art Movement, Mingei, Soetsu Yanagi established the Japanese Folk Crafts Museum in 1936. The museum's collection consists of approximately 17,000 craft works predominantly from Japan during the Mingei period, but also newer, older and international examples of craft, including slipware from Britain as well as  ceramics of Joseon Dynasty, wood works, paintings,  katsugi and sashiko kimonos of the Tohoku region, costumes and glass beads of the Ainu and woven, dyed textiles of Okinawa.