The Beauty of Everyday Things
The Beauty of Everyday Things is a book I’d seen in a few people’s instagram feeds and really wanted to give it a read. I think this is a great book for anyone who works in a traditional craft since the book itself covers a wide range of disciplines; pottery, print making, fabric weaving.
The book uses these disciplines as a background to really reinforce many of its main messages about craft and the purpose of it. That everyday objects should be beautiful and robust, something I rally agree with. Beauty doesn’t mean perfection and that part of the beauty of an everyday object is it’s ease of making for the craftsperson.
It’s really one of those books that encourages simplicity of form, understanding materials and tools in the design of work.
Written by Soetsu Yanagi it’s a compiled series of essays written for a variety of publications. Each article can be quite different from the one that went before it and it does have a fairly disjointed approach unlike one long essay. That said it does help to break up what at times can be quite a heavy writing style.
It’s hard to tell if that style comes from the English translation - with many of these essays being firmly in the 1930’s Showa Era of Japan, perhaps that was just the writing style of its time. Many of the points the book makes are quite laboured with what could have been just a sentence drawn out over several paragraphs and pages. I’d also say that having some kind of interest or background knowledge of Japan in reading this is key to understanding the text.
Despite it’s issues I actually really like this book. Lately I’ve been quite focused on creating new works and if your a creative person working in craft there’s a lot of food for thought here. Especially if you are in a creative rut and looking for some direction. The concepts in this book will somehow infiltrate your mind the next time you come to make new pieces. I bought my copy but if your local library is lucky enough to have a copy I’d recommend loaning it since this isn’t a book for everyone.
