On January 10 1926, Yanagi Sōetsu and the potters Hamada Shōji and Kawai Kanjirō sat talking excitedly late into the night at a temple on Mt Kōya, in Japan’s Wakayama Prefecture.

They were debating how best to honour the beauty of simple, everyday Japanese crafts. Out of that conversation came a new word, mingei, and a plan to found The Japan Folk Crafts Museum in Tokyo. Later, Yanagi would describe what emerged that night as “a new standard of beauty”.

A century on, Yanagi’s ideas feel strikingly relevant. His message was simple: beautiful things need not be rare or expensive – they can be well-designed objects that we use every day.

In an age of fast fashion, disposable products and growing concerns about waste, his approach offers an important reminder to think about the objects we choose to have around us.

Yanagi (1889–1961) was an art critic and collector who believed beauty was not solely the preserve of famous artists or rare treasures. He and his friends were drawn, instead, to well-made and functional objects: bowls, baskets, fabrics and tools created for daily use, rather than to display.

To Yanagi, these simple things shaped the rhythm of daily life – yet had gone unnoticed in a world rushing toward modern mass........

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