Sori Yanagi / Tendo Co. Ltd. / Japanese Crafts “Butterfly” Stool c.1956
Sori Yanagi (1915-2012), Japan
Tendo Co. Ltd., Japan
Butterfly stool, 1956.
Bleached rosewood veneer on plywood with brass.
H: 15” x W: 16 ½” x D: 12”
Price: $4,900
This model can be found in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art and the Metropolitan Museum in New York.
The Japanese designer Sori Yanagi is best known for his 1956 Butterfly Stool. It is both elegant and utterly simple: two curved pieces of molded plywood are held together through compression and tension by a single brass rod. The stool’s graceful shape recalls a butterfly’s wings, and has also been compared to the form of torii, the traditional Shinto shrine gates. He loved traditional Japanese crafts and was dedicated to the modernist principles of simplicity, practicality and tactility that are associated with Alvar Aalto, Charles and Ray Eames, and Le Corbusier.”
Yanagi, who studied architecture and art at Tokyo’s Academy of Fine Art, was inspired by the work of Le Corbusier and by the designer Charlotte Perriand, with whom he worked in the early 1940s, while she was in Tokyo as the arts and crafts adviser to the Japanese Board of Trade. But perhaps the most indelible influence on Yanagi was that of his father, Soetsu Yanagi, who led the “mingei” movement, which celebrated Japanese folk craft and the beauty of everyday objects, and who founded the Nihon Mingeikan (or Japanese Folk Crafts Museum) in Tokyo. Yanagi fils, who was named director of the museum in 1977, succinctly described his design aesthetic in a 2002 interview in The Japan Times: “I try to create things that we human beings feel are useful in our daily lives. During the process, beauty is born naturally.” Throughout his life, Sori Yanagi was inspired by what he called “anonymous design” — he cited the Jeep and a baseball glove as two examples — and he in turn inspired younger designers, like Naoto Fukasawa, Tom Dixon and Jasper Morrison.
Black enameled and nickeled metal, hinged ball weight, ball feet
Marks: RUPPEL (in a circle), mehrfach geschützt
Illustrated: Die Metall Werkstatt am Bauhaus, (Berlin: Bauhaus-Archiv, Museum für Gestaltung, 1992) pp. 181-3;
H: 1 5/8” x W: 5 1/4” x D: 4”
Napkin holder c. 1930
Black enameled metal and nickeled base
Marks: RUPPEL (in a circle), mehrfach geschützt, 85/4440/37, Ruv 5 (numbers in red crayon)
H: 3 ¾” x W: 5” x D: 2 1/8”
For other works by Brandt for Metallwarenfabrik Ruppelwerk see: Die Metall Werkstatt am Bauhaus, (Berlin: Bauhaus-Archiv, Museum für Gestaltung, 1992) pp. 180-183; Die Metall Werkstatt am Bauhaus, (Berlin: Bauhaus-Archiv, Museum für Gestaltung, 1992) pp. 181-3; Avantgarde Design 1880-1930, Torsten Bröhan, Thomas Berg (Cologne: Benedikt Taschen, 1994) p. 105.
F.W. QUIST Esslingen, Germany
Ball ashtray “Smokny”
Nickel plated metal and black lacquered surface
Marks: Quist (on bottom)
H: 3 1/2″
The hardwarefactory F.W.Quist, Esslingen, Germany was founded 1868 as „Lackier- und Metallwaarenfabrik“ from the turner and metal-turner Jacob Schweizer, jun.. In the year 1872, the conversion of the business from a public company occurred, the “Actien-Plaqué Fabrik”. From 1890, the director and shareholders Friedrich Wilhelm Quist took over the business as alone-owner. In his succession four generations continued the business as family-businesses until 1981.
The business always stood for the manufacture more representatively props in the taste of the time. „Tischkultur, Gastlichkeit, Geschenkkultur dienten als Felder, einen gehobenen, verfeinerten Lebensstil zu dokumentieren und das unabhängig von der gesellschaftlichen Zugehörigkeit.“ (Served table-culture, hospitality, gift-culture as fields should document lifestyle, independently of the social affiliation) (Esslingen 2004, S.60)
So, the form of the 1970 as newness presented ball-ashtray was borrowed this famous „ball“ or „globe“ (presented for the first time, 1966 at the international furniture-fair in Cologne) and „bubble“ (1968) chairs by the finish designer Eero Aarnio. The completely new and unconventional shape, Aarnio developed on basis of the simplest geometrical form, the ball. It advanced to a cult-object of the following decade and didn’t lose anything modernity until today.
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