Bamboo, Blades and YouTube
During the summer of 2025 I gave myself the task to learn to carve chashaku as part of my embodied research of Japanese crafts. If that sounds too esoteric, let me clarify. Chashaku (茶杓) are the small bamboo tea scoops used in the Japanese tea ceremony to transfer matcha from
Sketches of Japanese Craftsmanship in London, September 2025
Sketches are my half-baked ideas, projects and notes for articles. I scribble them on napkins, random notebook pages or in my phone’s notes app. Today's missive is from several activities I took part in during London Design Festival in September 2025. The common denominator was Japanese craftsmanship
Aliveness (what machines can't make)
Have you ever held an object and felt the maker's presence in your hands? In art they call it 'aura'. It's what distinguishes an original painting from its reproduction, what you hear in Miles Davis or Nina Simone’s live jazz performances, what you
Summer Special 2025
Last year’s summer special proved to be pretty popular so here I am at it again with highlights of what to read, listen, watch and visit in the next few months, all of them relating to craft and design in one way or another. But I’m also curious
Off the Hump: Poetry of Clay with Tarragon Smith
This webinar is part of The Summer Sessions: Craft & Design, a series of online conversations with craftspeople, designers, academics and storytellers. The previous one was on miracle fibres from Patagonia with Cindy Lilen. Tarragon Smith is a thoughtful person. Before I met him, his tea bowls 'spoke'
Miracle Fibres: From Patagonia to London with Cindy Lilen
What happens when ancient Andean wisdom meets contemporary design on one of London's most prestigious stages? The answer lies in a darkened room at Somerset House where visitors sit on felted benches, touching raw vicuña wool while listening to ancestral sounds. Textile artist Cindy Lilen co-created 'SUR
Portrait from the Family Album, 1878ca
This is an old photo from the family album. The boy in uniform was probably my grandfather (Ernesto Chicco), and the man next to him my great-grandfather. Unfortunately, I don't know for sure. The last person who likely knew was my late father. The photo, an albumen print,
The playful guinomi
This is the second essay in a three-part series that started with The humble yunomi. In Japanese drinking culture, the container often matters as much as what fills it. May is my birthday month so in the spirit of celebrating life, I thought it would be appropriate to write about
Crafting Memory: Alessi's Funeral Urns
I returned from Milan's Design Week with my head buzzing from good conversations, pretty sights and delicious food. As in previous years, what touched me were not the slick booths in the gargantuan pavilions nor the glitzy brand-extending exercises of luxury houses (although I did like Loewe’s
Ink, Stone, Brush, Paper and Tea
This weekend I returned to calligraphy after months away. Grinding ink on stone offers a welcome relief from screens. In contrast to the numbness of touching glass on a smartphone, you feel the scent of the ink forming, the sound and feeling of friction rubbing on the inkstone, applying soft
The Butterfly Effect: Sori Yanagi and the Art of Appreciation
The saying goes that you shouldn't meet your heroes, but what about celebrating them? In November last year, a diverse group of people working in the UK's design industry gathered at the Vitra showroom in London to launch the Sori Yanagi Appreciation Society (SYAS). Industrial designers
Born Elsewhere, Made in Japan
Most Japanese crafts knowledge could disappear within a generation. The country is growing old and depopulating at incredible speed, and as lifestyle has become more westernised throughout the last hundred years, fewer people are interested in becoming a shokunin, a craftsman. According to JapanCraft21, an organisation founded by Steve Beimel