Japanese design: Rinpa
Staff | Asian Art | 26th August 2022
The Tokugawa shogunate brought prosperity to 17th century Japan. Kyoto’s artists responded by more freely using colour, pattern and form – the Rinpa school was born. It did not limit artistic expression, meaning that its leading figures were designers as much as painters. Their “spectacular” household screens, ceramics and lacquerware mixed realism and stylization in a way that “harmonises with our modern aesthetic ideals” and still influences contemporary design.
