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Operated by the Calgary Contemporary Arts Society November 15 to December 27, 2007 |
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Masahiro Mori: Celebrating Triangle’s Year of Design Presented by the Triangle Gallery of Visual Arts in Partnership with the Japan Foundation in Toronto and the Consulate General of Japan in Calgary
Featuring simple, ordinary objects with elegant modernist lines, this exhibition illustrates how Mori’s functional and rational ceramics revolutionized post-war Japanese design. By fusing modern sensibility with traditional ideas Masahiro Mori intelligently and effectively appealed to an increasing affluent and Western-influenced Japanese society, and created an impressive body of ceramic works that accommodated changing ideas, needs, living standards and tastes. Jacek Malec
List of Images (left to right, top to bottom):
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The Japanese, by their geographic disposition and aesthetic temperament, have historically demonstrated an extraordinary talent for learning and adapting from outside sources without compromising and sacrificing their centuries-old system of beliefs and traditions. This attitude is very much evidenced in Japan’s contemporary visual arts, architecture, and design, particularly in ceramic design. For the Japanese, design has served – through development and application of the simple form of the design object combined with symbolic vocabulary – as a quiet and personal expression of the elegant as well as the ordinary. 
Ceramic design by Masahiro Mori (1927-2005), Japan’s leading contemporary ceramic designer and a strong advocate of the revolutionary Good Design Movement in the 1950s and 1960s, reflects these philosophical and formal principles. As a young designer in the late 1950s, he was instrumental in elevating Japan’s industrial design to international prominence. Post-war Japan required a radical shift in perception and focus, and Mori was a champion in transforming “Made in Japan” as a cheap alternative to “Made in Japan” as a quality choice. His keen eye and ability to successfully resolve design ideas and create final products that are both traditional and modern, have gained him an undisputed place in the annals of contemporary international design. 
Born in 1927 in Saga Prefecture, a region famous as the birthplace of porcelain in Japan, Masahiro Mori expressed an interest in visual forms in his early childhood. After graduating from the Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music in 1952, Mori took additional studies in ceramics and ceramic design at various arts and design institutions. In 1956 Mori assumed the position of product designer with the Hakusan Porcelain Company Ltd. in Hasami (Nagasaki Prefecture) - one of Japan’s most important ceramic centres, where in 1957 he designed his signature piece, the G-type Soy Sauce Bottle. This delicate little jar-like shoyusashi won him not only the Japanese Ministry of International Trade and Industry’s inaugural Good Design Prize (commonly known as the G-mark) in 1960, but also gained him international critical acclaim. Internationally, Mori’s G-type Soy Sauce Bottle has become well-known 
through invitational presentations in major survey exhibitions such as Avant-Gardes of Japan 1910-1970 at the Pompidou Centre in Paris (1986) and Japanese Design After 1950, which toured the United States, including the Philadelphia Museum of Art in 1994. In Japan, Mori’s radical design had been selected 111 times to bear the G-mark, making him the most celebrated designer in the history of this institution. In 1978, Mori established his own Masahiro Mori Industrial Design Laboratory and, while continuing his free-lance design services for Hakusan Porcelain, he also dedicated his time and energy as a key advocate of the Good Design Movement during his tenure at the Japan Design Committee. At the same time Mori’s rational and innovative ceramic design garnered international prestigious awards, including the Gold Prize for Industrial Ceramics at the International Ceramic Art Exhibition in 1975 in Faenza, Italy for his Coffee Set, another Gold Prize for A-type Party Tray at the International Industrial Design Exhibition in 1977 in Valencia, Spain, followed by the Grand Prix in the Ceramic Division of the International 
Industrial Design Exhibition in 1983 in Valencia, for the Shell Bowls. Mori’s radical ceramic design has become the subject of numerous group and solo exhibitions. In January 1995 Masahiro Mori’s Party Trays exhibition was held at the Ginza Gallery in Tokyo. To celebrate Mori’s outstanding design career, the National Museum of Modern Art in Tokyo launched in 2002 his major retrospective exhibition Masahiro Mori: A Reformer of Ceramic Design. Another exhibition showcasing Mori’s minimalist “WA” Series was curated by Kenya Hara, a member of the Japan Design Committee, and presented in 2004 at the Ginza Gallery, a year before Mori’s death in 2005. In 2007, a major commemorative survey exhibition, Masahiro Mori: Ceramic Design – co-presented by the Toronto-based Design Exchange and the Japan Foundation in association with the Japan Design Committee in Tokyo - was held at the Japan Foundation in Toronto. This exhibition – showcasing Mori’s radical ceramic design - is currently on display at the Triangle Gallery of Visual Arts in Calgary. Its presentation has been organized in partnership with the Consulate General of Japan in Calgary.
To be successful, functional ceramics must be of simple, elegant form and appeal to both function and our senses. In other words, the truly superior piece must not only perform well as a tool, but also have a pleasing shape and colour, and feel balanced in our hands. Organized by the Japan Foundation in collaboration with the Japan Design Committee and the National Museum of Modern Art in Tokyo, The Masahiro Mori: Ceramic Design Exhibition provides a unique opportunity for these revelatory moments, and experiences the essence of Mori’s design through hands-on interaction. The ability to intimately handle the actual ceramic pieces allows one to embrace the core of his signature designs. The exhibition showcases a wide gamut of Mori’s award-winning ceramic designs beginning with his radical shoyusashi, the G-type Soy Sauce Bottle designed in 1957 for the Hakusan Porcelain Company (Hakusan Toki Company Ltd.) in Hasami, Nagasaki, 
through the Shell Bowls of the 1980s, Party Tray Sets (1990s), Shallow Rice Bowls and Q-type Mugs (1990s) to the WA Series of tableware, that Mori designed for the MUJI Ryohin Keikaku Ltd. before his death in 2005. 
