Sori Yanagi
His work is a culmination of eastern and western design. Sori Yanagi's iconic modern designs utilising both the modern methods and materials of Europe and his Japanese heritage of craft and connection of forms to nature. Plywood the embodiment of this joining of cultures. The durable and malleable material able to reflect the ideals of both Europe and Japan.
He was born in Tokyo in 1915 and studied at his local art school. In the 1940s, early in his career, he was a designer in the office of Charlotte Perriand. In 1952 he founded the Yanagi Industrial Design Institute, to create products which synthesised east and west. In 1977, Sori Yanagi was named director of the Japanese Folk Art Museum in Tokyo.
