The Ki-Oke stools, designed by OeO and produced by Nakagawa Mokkougei for Japan Handmade, conjure the best of Japanese elegance and Scandinavian simplicity in one. Hands-down they fit into any interior decoration scheme that incorporates these elements. The choice of woods, the working of the material and their assembly are glorious and remind me of the finest of handcrafted products.
One of the weaknesses of traditional craft is that it’s precisely “tradition” that blinds us to the future. So how then do you bring millenary, rich and wonderful crafted products into the global 21stcentury? Enter Japan Handmade, the brainchild of visionary Copenhagen-based design think tank and studio OeO who with a handful of Kyoto-based craft companies are applying the Japanese aesthetic to progressive objects and elevating the brands to another level to secure the future of the craft.
Case in point, these quiet and poetic stools. Nakagawa, best known for producing traditional Japanese buckets used for bathing or storing food like rice and miso uses traditional methods going back 700 years. It was a no-brainer for OeO to design and commission Nakagawa to make these contemporary stools using the same techniques he uses for the buckets … and voila!
Keep up the hard work OeO … with my warmest personal greetings for continued success!
image credits: Japan Handmade, Kyoto and Copenhagen
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