Japanese Design

MoMA Design Series

The story of Japanese design, told through works selected from the collection of The Museum of Modern Art, New York.

Japanese designers’ special ability to combine aesthetic tradition with contemporary visual culture and material innovation has created a distinctive and exceptionally successful design industryin Japan, whichhas produced such divergent icons of modern designas Sori Yanagi’s Butterfly Stool, the Sony Walkman, the Honey-Pop Armchair, by Tokujin Yoshioka, and the Toyota Prius. This book traces the development of Japanese design from the country’s craft revival in the early twentieth century to the extraordinary objects of high technology that have been a specialty of Japanese designers since midcentury. Paola Antonelli’s lively introduction provides an overview of Japan’s design culture; an essay and timeline by Penny Sparke illuminate the masterpieces of modern Japanese design that are superbly reproduced in the volume’s plate section. 



Penny Sparke is Pro Vice-Chancellor in the Arts at Kingston University, UK. She is also the author of Elsie De Wolfe: The Birth of Modern Decoration and The Modern Interior.
Paola Antonelli is Senior Curator in the Department of Architecture and Design at The Museum of Modern Art, where she has worked since 1994.