Straft
Tamaki Ishii and Kazuma Yamagami (both 26) established their Tokyo-based studio after leaving university where they studied industrial design. Their graduation project changed the duo’s focus: they began to explore rice straw, a sustainable byproduct of rice, which they turn into chairs, tapestries and clothing.
Their chairs came first: “I like to imagine a life where straw is part of a space, and the presence of a chair brings energy to its surroundings,” says Ishii. He is careful to “retain the roughness of natural materials”. One of the studio’s designs is a straw bench that appears unfinished on one side – the design resembles the tip of a broom or an agricultural bundle.
The pair also create clothing, produced in a similar way to knitwear. “The straw is too stiff to use knitting needles, so I use my hands and form straw loops with my fingers,” Ishii explains. Although there is much craft involved, Ishii prefers to see his work “as designing – we add value to the material through the design process”.
Ishii says that “old-new design”, an approach that may be uniquely Japanese, sees crafts that have been handed down for centuries embraced in contemporary life. The technique Straft employs, for example, was used to make traditional straw mino garments, and later everyday items such as carpet, slippers and forms of shelter. The duo have conducted extensive research of collections at the Japan Open Air Folk House Museum in Kawasaki to work out how to adapt the technique to modern use. “Lifestyles have changed, but we wanted to find something that fits with contemporary daily life, and this material is not only practical but beautiful,” says Ishii. Inspired by this natural beauty, the duo have created accessories showcasing rice straw as a decorative finish. “We make pieces imagining what people in the old days would do with it today.” @straft__
Koji Yamamoto
Designer-craftsman Yamamoto creates objects that filter Japan’s traditional culture through a contemporary lens. The 46-year-old worked with furniture brands for more than 20 years before leaving the corporate world in 2024 to explore his creative projects full-time. His Tokyo-based brand How To Wrap creates designs based on kamon-ori: the art of folding colour paper into flower patterns. The works are created by stacking sheets of paper, shifting them one by one and folding them towards the centre. Yamamoto works on the pieces at home in Tokyo and at a second house in Nagano Prefecture.
“There is a Bauhaus-like graphic-ness to the designs, but they can never be machine-made, they are produced only by hand,” he says of the art, which he learnt from an illustrated book written by Mitsuhiro Uchiyama. “You don’t know what shape they will take when folding. I’m often so focused on the paper and my hands that I forget to breathe.”
From kamon-ori, Yamamoto has since extended his skills to wrapping stones in strings, a riff on the Japanese custom of placing the objects on the ground to mark out areas where one should not tread (typically around tea gardens or sacred spaces). “The process of hand-making gives the pieces meaning, it’s a meditative practice,” he explains. In this way, his work also subtly subverts the original intention of the stone, as they are made to take inside a space. @howtowrap_
Shinya Yamamoto
Yamamoto first caught international attention when, in 2023, he offered a collection of woven paper and leather vases in a collaboration with the Parisian apparel brand Polène. The vases, resembling an upside-down hat with a large rim, can be bent like a collar to create a range of different shapes. “I wanted there to be an interaction between people and interior design, not only through craftsmanship but by giving those using the piece the possibility of adding their own touches to it,” says the 46-year-old designer, who was previously the creative director of Japanese home furnishing label Mobje (an offshoot of the hat-maker Fujii Hat, which has a 70-year history), and for whom the project was an opportunity to transform an accessory that’s largely disappearing from use in Japan as formal dress wear into an object for the home.
Wood, however, is Yamamoto’s preferred medium. To this end, the designer has opened a workshop in Hida Takayama – an area known for its woodworkers, and where furniture techniques are highly developed – to produce pieces using small offcuts from Japanese hardwoods such as beech and zelkova. “This type of wood is not often used for furniture because it is prone to twisting and distortion, but is an important part of Japan’s forestry,” says Yamamoto. “I want to utilise its characteristics through design and highly skilled cabinetry.” shinyayamamoto.jp
Takashi Kita
Kita, 46, established the furniture design-maker Kitaworks in 2009. The studio builds on the skills and techniques developed by the welding factory founded by his father Seishi Kita in Tsuyama, Okayama Prefecture, where he worked after graduating from high school.
His furniture melds metal – iron, stainless steel, copper and brass – which is applied using the techniques he learnt while working in the industry. His three-legged Arch chair exemplifies this approach: the pared-down design is based on the pursuit of functionality, with three legs, a perforated plate seat and backrest that, in turn, is gently curved to create the appearance of a crafted element. “I search for the essence of a thing, and combine it with a rationality that is born out of necessity,” says Kita. His brass cabinet bears this out. Its simple form conceals an intricate locking system. When the handle is turned, the bar moves up and down to lock the door. “I don’t make furniture for the sake of beauty, the beauty is revealed as a result of its function.” kita-works.com
Yuri Himuro
Tokyo-based textile designer Himuro explores connectivity through her work. “I search for ways people can interact with my textiles – and not just by looking and appreciating them,” says the 36-year-old. Himuro uses a special weaving technique that she developed herself to create the Snip Snap series of textiles (which can be used as wall hangings or cushion covers), producing a pattern resembling, for instance, a blue sky or green lawn. This panoramic view recalls Japanese paintings of the 17th century. The long yarns used on the surface of the textiles can be cut with scissors, allowing the person who owns the piece to change the design by trimming it. No skills are required: children and adults are encouraged to be creative.
Himuro came up with the idea for Snip Snap in 2012 after coming across a jacquard machine capable of complex programming as an exchange student at Aalto University in Finland. The collection led to a collaboration with contemporary rug specialist CC-Tapis, followed by another with fashion house Loewe, where she created a textile for the brand that revealed the Loewe logo when cut.
The concept is not easy to imitate. “Designing a weaving draft for a pattern that appears when you cut the yarns involves quite complex engineering,” says Himuro. “I spend many hours working out the draft myself.” She continues to innovate. Her new Colorwave blanket is thermo-treated to make the yarns shrink. In turn, the blanket appears different depending on the direction and angle you look at it. It will be exhibited at 3 Days of Design in Copenhagen in June. h-m-r.net
Takamasa Nakamura
Japanese artisan-designer Nakamura creates new furniture from vintage pieces, which he sources at local auctions. He works alone in the countryside of Saitama, but has found a growing audience of international followers through social media, with whom he shares his skills. Many of his finds date back to the 1930s: wooden chests of drawers, cabinets and tables that bear the marks of use. “Observing the layers of time on each piece, I make adjustments to bring the wood back to its original state,” he explains. Nakamura has a background in furniture restoration; he was formerly employed at a workshop in Ibaraki Prefecture. There, if an old piece was missing wood elements, he would have to imagine how they might have looked and fabricate them back to life. “Each missing part is different. You can’t buy these at a hardware store.”
Born in 1991, Nakamura studied design at university in Saitama Prefecture, where the students were encouraged to use computers and digital devices as tools to create homogeneous designs that could be easily reproduced. “At the time, I believed that this was the right way to design, but then found myself captivated by the old wooden houses of Japan,” Nakamura recalls. These encounters became the motivation behind his current practice. “The lines of those houses, made by traditional carpenters adapting to the organic contours of wood, were so different from anything I would have designed as a student. My shell was broken.”
That epiphany led him to explore vintage furniture: “My approach is to remove the patina that is layered over time, while preserving the age inherent in the wood,” explains Nakamura. “The work is done with the intention of restoring the wood’s natural energy.” incarnation-tn.jp
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