Tokyo Craft Room—Time Spent Surrounded by Special Crafts

Comprising a hotel, shops, and residences for leasing, the Hamacho Hotel and Apartments complex has opened in the Hamacho neighborhood of Nihonbashi. On the second floor of the hotel section, one finds an attractive guest room, the Tokyo Craft Room. Here one can linger in a space that includes displays of objects created collaboratively by international and Japanese designers and artisans, selected by the designer Teruhiro Yanagihara.

For example, the cabinets that give an overwhelming sense of presence throughout the guest room were produced through collaboration between De Intuïtiefabriek, a design unit in Amsterdam, and Soma, a brand of products using coniferous wood sourced domestically from Gifu Prefecture. A team from De Intuïtiefabriek visited the Soma atelier in Gifu, and began designing the objects from the conceptual stage there, highlighting the contrast between the strength of Japanese cedar wood with its annual rings and straight grain, and the softness of Gifu washi paper, produced locally, which covers half of the cabinets.

The objects placed inside the cabinets are by a different collaborative pair. There are cups by Ingegerd Råman, a Swedish glass and ceramics designer, and by Koransha, an established Arita ware kiln in Saga Prefecture. Three years ago this collaboration produced a new brand of Arita ware called ‘2016/’. The confidential relationship arising from this guided their second creative project. Today, molds are used in the mainstream production of most Arita kilns, because identical finish is highly valued, but Ingegerd proposed creating ‘vessels for imbibing’ that have been turned by hand on a potter’s wheel. The result can be seen in the cups in the pictures.

Designers and artisans working at the leading edge have crafted objects through a hands-on experimental process. Why not spend some time here, for a luxurious sojourn in a space arranged with these very objects?