JAPANESE DESIGN

Japanese designers special ability to combine aesthetic tradition with contemporary visual culture and material innovation has created a distinctive and exceptionally successful design industry in Japan, which has produced such divergent icons of modern design as Sori Yanagi s Butterfly Stool, the Sony Walkman, the Honey-Pop Armchair by Tokujin Yoshioka, and the Toyota Prius. This book traces the development of Japanese design from the country s craft revival in the early twentieth century to the extraordinary objects of high technology that have been a specialty of Japanese designers since mid-century. Paola Antonelli s lively introduction provides an overview of Japan s design culture; an essay and timeline by Penny Sparke illuminate the masterpieces of modern Japanese design that are superbly reproduced in the volume s plate section.