There's nothing wrong with valuing the crafts of the commoner and taking pride in national or even regional goods and arts. In fact, I even encourage such pride and appreciation of common goods and handicrafts. It would not be entirely amiss to describe Yanagi's position in Japan as comparable to that of Ruskin and Morris in England ... He left as a legacy an aesthetic and religious creed of vital importance to men and women all over the world (Bernard Leach) Through their own efforts, these people made their daily lives more beautiful. This is the true calling, the mission, of handicrafts. We are drawn by that beauty and we have much to learn from it. Radical and inspiring . . . Yanagi’s vision puts the connection between heart and hand before the transient and commercial.” —Edmund de Waal, OBE, author of The Hare with Amber Eyes

Bittersweet Crimson will be the twenty-second release in Bloom’s career of more than fifty years. Bloom got his start touring with his older brother, folk singer Christy Moore, but soon earned recognition for his own poetic songwriting and unique guitar style.Soetsu Yanagi’s unerring eye has influenced generations of makers. His notion of Zen and the art of design continues to inspire all those involved in shaping our everyday world.” —Jasper Morrison, British designer

Yanagi’s philosophy of patterns has an interesting parallel in Cezanne’s portraits of the landscapes of Provence in southern France (such as Sainte Victoire Mountain), using a demanding system of parallel brushstrokes, which suggests an inner unity in keeping with Cezanne’s aim of painting being “harmony in parallel with nature.” The book is critical towards the western obsession of perfection as the only promise of beauty. In fact, and if you’re familiar with Japanese arts and culture there is an emphasis on the imperfect being superior. Y (More infos: In Praise of Shadows, Junchiro Tanizaki 1933); Was really great to read before going to MONA museum. Yanagi emphasises the appreciation for unsigned artwork & how knowledge of who the creator of an art piece should come last, taking this approach for a change was again really refreshing & fun. While there may be many intrinsic contradictions, I still think that there is probably no country like Japan whose people live in surroundings composed of specially chosen objects. Behind it all is undoubtedly some sort of educated taste or standard of beauty. To put it in somewhat contradictory terms, true tea existed only before the advent of the tea ceremony. After the coming of tea, when deformation came to be consciously sought, common everyday beauty disappeared and unnatural manipulation began. This meant the demise of the beauty of tea.

Mention must also be made of the Japanese concept of the “Void,” which can be understood as existing as a pluripotent hypostasis from whence all creation issues. Yanagi defines this using Buddhist terminology, with the Void ( Mu) containing limitless existence ( Yu) and all things being empty of any intrinsic existence of their own ( Ku). The latter itself is strikingly similar to Ibn Arabi’s concept of Wahdat Al-Wujud (Oneness of Existence), where the only reality that really exists is God.