- Distinctively Easter
- East Meets West
- Future East
The first section deals with traditional examples of East Asian design and what makes the designs so distinctive. A great deal of silk, jade and porcelain is used, and this section provides and introduction to the crafts.
This section also includes some very rare pieces from Korea. Craft from this part of East Asia is not very well presented, despite being so influential in their techniques. They never traded with the west and so traditional examples of Korean craft are extremely hard to come by. They saw the way that Chinese and Japanese culture had been diluted by the contact and trade with the west. They were particularly influential to Japan, and are actually older as a civilisation and producer of crafts and design using particular techniques. The oldest is China, then Korea and then Japan, yet Korea often gets forgotten about.
Lacquer, a process particular to Japan is often called Japan in the same way that porcelain is called China. It was in China that the process of inlaying metals for designs and using different grades of gold powder was first used.
There is a high level of skill in Asian crafts, some being in families for generations as it is past down from one family member to the other. One would focus intensely on one craft for the whole of their lives and become extremely skilled in it, as opposed to being relatively skilled in a number of different crafts. In Japan, some crafts go back sixteen generations in a family. It is because of this that creativity and innovation was not encouraged and copying was: it was a tradition to be in awe of previous generations and so copying was seen as a positive thing.
The second section deals with how east has met west in design: there are many examples of western attempts to copy eastern design, many of which have been placed alongside traditional objects, which makes it interesting to try and decipher which object is authentically eastern. There are a number of contemporary pieces of design in this section, such as a stool made out of bamboo, a sustainable material, that won a prestigious design award and a conceptual chair composed of different chair designs and upholstery, as a comment on how cultures steal from one another.
The third section contains only contemporary pieces by innovative designers from the East. Their use of glass is especially interesting, as it has not been a material that they have used historically and so have a completely different approach to its properties and how to use them in art and design.
Lacquer, a process particular to Japan is often called Japan in the same way that porcelain is called China. It was in China that the process of inlaying metals for designs and using different grades of gold powder was first used.
There is a high level of skill in Asian crafts, some being in families for generations as it is past down from one family member to the other. One would focus intensely on one craft for the whole of their lives and become extremely skilled in it, as opposed to being relatively skilled in a number of different crafts. In Japan, some crafts go back sixteen generations in a family. It is because of this that creativity and innovation was not encouraged and copying was: it was a tradition to be in awe of previous generations and so copying was seen as a positive thing.
The second section deals with how east has met west in design: there are many examples of western attempts to copy eastern design, many of which have been placed alongside traditional objects, which makes it interesting to try and decipher which object is authentically eastern. There are a number of contemporary pieces of design in this section, such as a stool made out of bamboo, a sustainable material, that won a prestigious design award and a conceptual chair composed of different chair designs and upholstery, as a comment on how cultures steal from one another.
The third section contains only contemporary pieces by innovative designers from the East. Their use of glass is especially interesting, as it has not been a material that they have used historically and so have a completely different approach to its properties and how to use them in art and design.
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