“Mokujiki Fever” - Carved Religious Sculptures Continues to Inspire Generations

THE NEW YORK TIMES
By Alice Rawsthorn

A Kenzo Tange chair (1957), a 1958 piece by Ruth Asawa and a spouted sake bowl, c. 1850. by an unknown craftsman.

UNITED KINGDOM---When Mokujiki Shonin, a Japanese monk from an ascetic Buddhist sect..., turned 83 in 1800, he vowed to devote his remaining years to carving religious sculptures to deposit at sacred sites throughout the country. In the mid-1920s, newspapers in the places where he had left the sculptures published reports of “Mokujiki fever” as a group of young intellectuals scoured the countryside to find them. For the group’s leader, Soetsu Yanagi, the search doubled as a research exercise to study the wealth of exquisitely crafted ceramics, metalwork and textiles made by anonymous artisans in towns and villages across Japan. The mingei movement and its enduring influence on artists, designers and artisans is the theme of the exhibition “Mingei: Are You Here?” running through Jan. 18 at the Pace Gallery in London. [link]