Tokyo Crafts & Design

Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum, New Traditional Craft Production Project

Forty-one kinds are designated as traditional crafts by the Tokyo Metropolitan Government. These are the fruits of skills and souls that blossomed in the Edo period and have been nurtured over the years. However, as the times change drastically, there are many crafts that have fallen on hard times and are looking for a new path. On the other hand, Tokyo’s culture and design are attracting attention from all over the world, and the number of Japanese designers who are interested in traditional crafts is increasing every year. TOKYO CRAFTS & DESIGN” is a collaborative effort between traditional craftsmen who need ideas for products that fit today’s lifestyles, and designers who know the appeal of crafts and want to utilize their own ideas and designs to create new traditional crafts. The artisans and designers have been working as a team to develop products while deepening their understanding of each other. A team of experts, including art directors, curators, and intellectual property advisors, worked together to develop the products. The result is a beautiful museum product that will become a “future tradition. From the Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum, to Japan, and to the world. We hope that you will feel the new possibilities of traditional crafts.

Connecting the beautiful handicrafts of Tokyo to the future

Tokyo’s traditional handicrafts have been handed down from Edo culture to the present day. There are high hopes for a scheme that does not protect these techniques in the dark, but rather guides them from a designer’s perspective to evolve in line with modern culture. We believe that this is the beginning of an unprecedented chemical reaction between craftsmen and designers. The TOKYO CRAFTS & DESIGN project began with an open call for entries from traditional craftspeople involved in Tokyo’s designated traditional crafts. By posting the skills of these craftsmen on the web, designers can create designs using these skills. In addition, a period of time was set aside for mutual recognition of possible works to be produced through experiential exchange, such as visiting the factories of craftspeople who wished to be matched. The craftsmen then created prototypes based on the design plans, and the series selected through the commercialization process will be exhibited and sold as “Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum Original Products” from October 2012. We hope that the skills of traditional craftsmen and the perspectives of designers will create a new movement in Tokyo through this new project.
Art Director Chiaki Murata (from TOKYO CRAFTS & DESIGN catalog)