Folk Art Potters of Japan: Beyond an Anthropology of Aesthetics

by Brian Moeran

Overview

This is a study of a group of potters living in a small community in the south of Japan, and about the problems they face in the production, marketing and aesthetic appraisal of a kind of stoneware pottery generally referred to as mingei, or folk art. It shows how different people in an art world bring to bear different sets of values as they negotiate the meaning of mingei and try to decide whether a pot is 'art', 'folk art', or mere 'craft'.
At the same time, this book is an unusual monograph in that it reaches beyond the mere study of an isolated community to trace the origins and history of 'folk art' in general. By showing how a set of aesthetic ideals originating in Britain was taken to Japan, and thence back to Europe and the United States - as a result of the activities of people like William Morris, Yanagi So etsu, Bernard Leach and Hamada Sho ji - this book rewrites the history of contemporary western ceramics.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781136796807
Publisher:	Taylor & Francis
Publication date:	12/19/2013
Series:	Anthropology of Asia
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	272
File size:	5 MB

About the Author

Brian Moeran

Table of Contents

Introduction; Chapter 1 The Japanese Mingei Movement; Chapter 2 A Pottery Community; Chapter 3 Social Organization; Chapter 4 Ecology and Social Structure; Chapter 5 Labour Cooperation; Chapter 6 Environmental and Social Change; Chapter 7 The Mingei Boom and Economic Development; Chapter 8 The Decline of Community Solidarity; Chapter 9 Theory and Practice in Japanese Mingei; Chapter 10 Folk Art, Industrialization and Orientalism;

Editorial Reviews

'One of the strengths of this book is that it contextualizes a rich, tightly focused ethnography within discussions of the implications of the data to larger theoretical questions Although grappling with abstract theoretical matters, this book is well organized, highly readable, and always grounded in the case study of the potters. Influences are always shown to be reciprocal or circular and not linear. The splendid photographs bring the pots and the setting to life. If Blake can "see a world in a grain of sand," Moeran can in a grain of clay, and he has depicted it for us in rich and satisfying detail.' - Karen A. Smyers, Asian Folklore Studies

From the Publisher