Bruno Taut. Kunstgewerbe und Möbel für Japan

In August 1934, architect Bruno Taut began to expand and direct provincial workshop operations for his client in Takasaki, Gunma Prefecture: Japanese artisans crafted utilitarian objects and furniture according to his designs and the work plans of his collaborators. All of Taut's sketches, together with the related working drawings and the finished objects, are documented here for the first time. The sheer productivity of these exile years – hundreds of designs for lamps, household objects, bamboo ware and textile patterns – amounts to a body of work in its own right. Taut was at the same time a sought-after adviser to manufacturers and to the State Institute of Industrial Arts in Sendai, for which he drafted programmes, modelled on the Deutscher Werkbund, to improve the quality of Japanese export goods. The volume presents this activity through Taut's own writings, letters and diary entries.