Discover A Monograph Highlighting Designer Shiro Kuramata’s Legacy

Shiro Kuramata: Essays & Writings
By Deyan Sudjic
New York and London: Phaidon, $150
406 pages, 600 color and b&w illustrations

Few Japanese designers represent the spirit of the country’s post-World War II boom and cultural reimagining better than Shiro Kuramata. From humble beginnings as a cabinetmaker, he made his mark on the country’s emerging consumer culture first with furniture pieces for the famed Tokyo department store Matsuya, and later as a frequent collaborator of Issey Miyake, defining the look of the brand’s clothing boutiques worldwide. At the peak of his creativity, as a founding member of the Memphis Group in the early 1980’s, Kuramata was a pioneer in the use of industrial materials, pushing the boundaries of what furniture could be.

Organized thematically, Essays & Writings honors the legacy of Kuramata, who died in 1991 at 56, by layering his more memorable objects—the Revolving Cabinet (1970) for Cappellini, its 20 drawers rotating around a metal stand; the Miss Blanche Chair (1988) for Ishimaru, inspired by the Tennessee Williams heroine and part of the Museum of Modern Art’s permanent collection; his 1976 Glass Chair gracing the book’s cover—with essays that detail how such forces as his war-torn childhood influenced his career. The community that orbited him—Arata Isozaki and Ettore Sottsass among them—is present throughout via essays and images, joined by never-before-published archival photography, sketches, and personal reflections. Kuramata’s commercial building projects appear as well, including Tokyo’s Carioca Building from 1971, the color of its lacquered-steel facade a wink to the clip-on red gas tank on the 1952 Honda Club moped. Nodding to his focus on materiality, the monograph comes in a special acrylic slipcase.