Gianfranco Chicco

Gianfranco Chicco

Conference director, marketing strategist, and writer, acting as a cultural translator between different worlds. I create experiences that bring people together and curate The Craftsman Newsletter.

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Kamon, the original logos of Japan

Traditions are living entities. The Hatoba family enriches and evolves the role of the Monsho Uwaeshi, the artisans of Japanese family crests, ensuring that the thousand-year-old craft of mon making remains relevant in the 21st century. I come from an Italian family on my father’s side with a noble

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Craftsmanship and Circularity Are One

When I’m asked about my interest in craftsmanship, especially that of Japan, I explain that at its core is the fact that circular principles are inherently baked in. Modern designers rightly focus on using sustainable materials, reducing waste, ensuring repairability, and promoting recycling. Japanese crafts go beyond this, intertwining

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Fabrico, ergo intellego

Enzo Mari was passionately opposed to consumerism and criticised mediocre objects not made to last. He believed that to truly appreciate the value of an item—like a chair or sofa—consumers needed to learn how to make it with their own hands, gaining a deeper understanding of what goes

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Newsletter Summer Special 2024

When I started The Craftsman Newsletter in 2017 it was about recommending craft-related objects and people I encountered through my frequent travels. In time it evolved into original long-form stories that went behind the scenes. When lockdowns hit in 2020 and my plans to go to Japan to do research

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The genius of Raku Jikinyū

“He’s clearly a genius” one of the collectors in attendance at the exhibition told me a few weeks ago. However, the work of Raku Jikinyū was not always seen that way.  Jikinyū rejects labels like ‘artist’, ‘artisan’ or ‘potter’ and would rather be called a chawanya, a maker of

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Art without heroes: Mingei with Róisín Inglesby

On Friday 14 June 2024 I hosted an online session to dive into Japanese folk-craft culture. The William Morris Gallery  in London is hosting the brilliant exhibition: ‘Art Without Heroes: Mingei’ (running until 22 September 2024), so I invited the curator, Róisín Inglesby, to discuss five of her favourite stories

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A Tale Of Two Orin - Part 1

It's November 2023 and I’m in Takaoka, Toyama prefecture. There’s a sleepy atmosphere despite it being a Monday. The city is famous across Japan for its copperware and decorative lacquerware. It’s raining and I’m here to visit the workshop of Shimatani Yoshinori, a 4th-generation

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Talking by making: pottery in the heart of Uji

Ceramics and tea culture are both close to my heart so when Hosai Matsubayashi XVI invited me to practise pottery at Asahiyaki it felt like a dream come true.

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Talking by making: soba noodles in Tokyo

Akila Inouye runs the Tsukiji Soba Academy in Tokyo. A fan of molecular cuisine, his teaching method relies on getting to know the history of soba, grasping the underlying chemistry of its preparation and of course cooking and eating them in different ways.

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Moving at human speed

You can tell that September was the busiest time at work when all I could manage to write about was putting tomatoes on handmade ceramic plates and sharing daily Instagram Stories about preparing matcha (抹茶, Japanese powdered green tea) in a proper teabowl using a bamboo whisk. Truth is, these

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Tomatoes on Japanese ceramic plates taste better

Do tomatoes taste better when eaten from a nice Japanese ceramic plate? Objectively, no. But the experience of serving and eating the tomatoes does improve. That is because human experience is not limited just to the physical characteristics of the food but how we interact with it, from the sensorial

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From artificial to artisanal intelligence

Unless you’ve been living under a rock, anything Artificial Intelligence (AI) related is top of the newscycle. Even my local florist will go to great lengths to share his thoughts on how AI is going to either make us miserable or be the end of the human race. However,