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
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
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
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
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.
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.
London Design Festival
I was the Head of Content & Digital of London Design Festival (LDF), overseeing the 2021, 2022 and 2023 editions. Founded in 2003, London Design Festival celebrates and promotes the city as a design capital on the global stage and is one of the world's leading design events.
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
London Design Biennale
I served as Head of Content & Digital for London Design Biennale (LDB) during the 2021 and 2023 editions. Established in 2016, London Design Biennale is a three-week international exhibition and thought leadership programme located at historic Somerset House, in the heart of London. It showcases global design innovation, creativity
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
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,
Turning a banal conference badge into a collectible item
Throwback to 2010 when I was leading marketing and communications at the PICNIC Festival in Amsterdam during the day, and the Conference Director of Frontiers of Interaction in Rome at night. The first decade of the 2000s had been a fervent period for innovative media-tech-creativity conferences to rise and refresh