‘Soetsu Yanagi: The Beauty of Miscellaneous Things’

48 page manuscript book, written out in black Chinese ink with gouache illustrations on mould-made paper, orange Zerkall endpapers, bound in Somerset card with a beige paper cover. Completed in 2020. Text reproduced with permission from Penguin Books

I have wanted to use this text for some time. Yanagi was involved in setting up the Mingei folk art movement in Japan during the 1930s, and was also associated with Bernard Leach and Shoji Hamada at the 1952 Dartington conference. There are many things in this text with which I agree, especially in relation to the importance of simplicity in a craft object: ‘But “simplicity” must not be understood as being rough and unrefined . . . True beauty cannot be achieved without simplicity.’ It is this effort to achieve a certain kind of simplicity that informs my own personal aesthetic.

I would not agree with Leach’s claims about the moral nature of craft work, but certainly in my own experience, there is a certain kind of consciousness that is necessary for calligraphy, which requires a purposeful relaxation of the ego: ‘Everything is left to the flow of nature, adhering only to the dictates of the object and the heart.’

There is no better description of the act of making.