Kawai Kanjiro, Japan's William Morris

"Any work of art belongs to everyone, because it is whatever each person sees in it.  It is the same with people. We are all one. I am you. The you that only I can see."

 tiger plate

Kawai Kanjiro (1890-1966) was a potter, artist, calligrapher, sculptor, writer and philosopher.  He was one of the founders of the Japanese Mingei ("folk art") movement in the early half of the twentieth century which was responsible for revitalizing and keeping alive many traditional arts in the face of the "great tide of industrialization" that was sweeping Japan.  Kanjiro valued simplicity and beauty in everyday articles of use (sounding familiar yet?), collecting the works of poor craftspeople from all over Asia.  With his compatriots he sought to "counteract the desire for cheap, mass-produced products" by reviving traditional arts.  His output was so tremendous, including over 10,000 glaze experiments carried out while still a student in college, that it was said that a supernatural force was guiding him.

His home and pottery studio have been preserved as the Kawai Kanjiro Museum in Kyoto.

how beautiful is this pussywillow garland....it is hung from the kettle hanging over the brazier in the center of the room.

A highly unusual mix of eastern and western style furniture characterized his home....

The gal on first floor above is sitting in front of the brazier -- very much an "open plan" design with sliding panels providing privacy as needed.  Note block and tackle hanging from ceiling in center of house!

the small kiln

This is the first time I've ever seen an Asian "stair" cabinet used as actual functional stairs!  I love how the string of balls serves as a banister.  You can also see how the wall is framed up to the cabinet from the hallway side in bottom pic.

The modest looking face to street.  The curving bamboo structure along the front is a quite common feature of traditional homes in Kyoto and is called inu yarai --- according to what I could discover, it serves multiple purposes including: 1) protecting the earthen or wooden wall from becoming dirty from rain splashing up from the road; 2) stopping dogs from peeing on the wall (Inu means dog); 3) keeping people from loitering in front and leaning against the wall (in days when streets were more crowded), and 4) making it difficult for burglars to climb the wall (I'm sure any self-respecting ninja or parkour-ian would find this last thought amusing.)

Heian Shrine, Kyoto, Japan

Yesterday I went on a marathon walk around Kyoto, a city full of shrines and their gardens.  Unlike nearly every other city in Japan, Kyoto was fortunate not to be firebombed to ashes by the U.S. during WW2 (they don't teach us that in school).  The Shinto Heian Shrine is relatively young, built in 1895 to commemorate the 1100th year since the founding of Kyoto.  It has numerous buildings all painted vermilion, a color that was apparently first derived from the application of clay (see more about vermilion below).  It also has a garden so beautiful you walk around in a daze of blissful revery---it was designed by Ogawa Jihei (1860-1933), one of Japan's great gardeners. 

the main gate

Had Monet been here he would have called for his paints.

Note all the Japanese women carrying parasols!  It was in the high 80's. 

a prayer "shrub"

Stepping stones that form the tail of a dragon.  The island forms the dragon's body.

These rope decorations hang over doorways in many of the shrines and are called shimenawa (the rope) and shime (the strips of white paper).  They are meant to ward off evil spirits and the white paper symbolizes purity in the Shinto faith.  DIY?

the inherent duality of life?

From wikipedia:  Vermilion, when found naturally occurring, is an opaque orangish red pigment,  used since antiquity, originally derived from the powdered mineral cinnabar. Chemically, the pigment is mercuric sulfide,  HgS, and like many mercury compounds it is toxic. Its name is derived from the French vermeil which was used to mean any red dye, and which itself comes from vermiculum, a red dye made from the insect Kermes vermilio.  Today, vermilion is most commonly artificially produced by reacting mercury with molten sulfur. Most naturally produced vermilion comes from cinnabar mined in China, giving rise to its alternative name of China red.

Heian's Torii, one of the largest in Japan, is the traditional gateway to a Shinto shrine marking the transition between the sacred and the profane.

M. H. Baillie Scott, Art and Soul

Baillie Scott was one of the most well-known architects of the British Arts and Crafts movement, along with Voysey, Gimson, and Mackintosh, and most certainly studied the work of William Morris.  In 1906, in his early forties, he published his opus, Houses and Gardens, which carefully and systematically laid out his philosophy of architecture and interior design, complete with dozens of drawings, floorplans, photographs, and his own watercolor paintings (some of which are reproduced here, all click to enlarge).

I particularly enjoyed this passage from the book's Introduction:  "And so the art of building as practised in modern times is not so much an Art as a disease.  In the early stages of the Victorian era it took the form of a pallid leprosy.  Nowadays, it has become a scarlet fever of red brick, and has achieved a development of spurious Art expressed in attempts to achieve the picturesque, which in its smirking self-consciousness has made the earlier candid ugliness appear an almost welcome alternative.  There is no town or village but is being gradually disfigured by this plague of modern building, and one has almost forgotten that houses have been and may yet be an added beauty rather than a disfigurement on the land."

Nothing like a good rant, eh?  I am reminded of all the quarter acre lots across our country upon which the ugly McMansions of our day have been built.  Will these houses seem much more attractive, even sought after, a century from now?  The leprosy and scarlet fever Baillie Scott alludes to above are now our gorgeous old Queen Anne, Italianate, Stick Style, and Mansard Victorians.  Does time heal all wounds, architectural or otherwise?

(Dan, thanks for lending me this beautiful book.) 

 

The House as True Romance, M. H. Baillie Scott

From Houses and Gardens, Arts and Craft Interiors, Chapter 17 - The Soul of the House, published 1906,  by M. H. Baillie Scott:

"A house too may possess that strange inscrutable quality of the True Romance.  Not shallow, showy, and pretentious as most modern mansions are, but full of a still, quiet earnestness which seems to lull and soothe the spirit with promises of peace.  Such a house is the greatest achievement possible to the art of man better than the greatest picture, because it is not a dream alone, but the dream come true - a constant daily influence and delight."

This quote reminded me of two previous posts, the first one about Edward Burne-Jones's view of art as a dream of something too impossibly beautiful to be real and the second post about "gesamtkunstwerk", a perfect synthesis of all the arts.  Having a Burne-Jones painting in your Baillie-Scott house would make for good gesamtkunstwerk I reckon.

 detail of stair risers in house above

 

The house photographs are from a beautiful book, Baillie Scott, The Artistic House by Diane Haigh.  I'll write more about Baillie Scott, and his interior work, in a day or two.

Vernacular Architecture of Australia

Roadhouses of the Nullabor Plain, Cocklebiddy

For the last week RW, MW and myself have been staying in roadhouses along the Eyre Highway, the only highway going east west across the south of Australia --- another highway goes across the top of the country (imagine the US with only two paved roads connecting the east and west coasts). The Eyre is so monotonous along the Nullabor a bend in the road is worthy of comment.  The roadhouses tend to be spaced about a hundred kilometers apart, relatively close by outback standards, and each consists of five key components:

The gas station (~$AU1.74/litre or roughly $US5.50/gal)

 The restaurant/bar/snack store ($AU6/beer or ~$US30 for a six-pack)

The motel (typically cinder block “lego-style” architecture)

The caravan park (a tree for shade if you are lucky)

And a very big parking lot for the road trains.

Each morning we leave the world of road-trains and “grey nomads” (retirees with caravans) and head off into bush on dirt tracks.  Most days we do not see another car or person until we come back to the highway at end of day.  The bush is incredibly beautiful with lots of skippies (roos), emu (is that plural?), snakes, lizards, wedge-tailed eagles, parrots, falcons, wild horses, one dingo, one red-back spider, and various other small creatures and birds.  Mostly it is just all beautifully remote…..and dusty….the shower at the end of the day feels great.

Each roadhouse typically offers one last amenity at the end of each day….an incredible sunset.