Salone del Mobile.Milano 2024 was held from April 16 to 22, 2024, in the city of Rho, near Milan, Italy.

The Milano Salone is the world's largest furniture fair and a venerable celebration that attracts the admiration of designers from around the world. In its 62nd edition, 1950 exhibits from 35 countries filled the 174,457 m2 exhibition hall.

”Tokyo Creative Salon” exhibited a booth and displayed artworks created through our Noto reconstruction projects ”HOPE with NOTO and ”Stand with NOTO”.

Tokyo Creative Salon Booth

”HOPE with NOTO” and ”Stand with NOTO” are crowdfunding projects to provide housing and jobs to Wajima lacquerware artisans who were affected by the Noto Peninsula earthquake that occurred on New Year's Day, 2024. The project has raised 22,152,000 yen from 2024/03/01 to 2024/05/18 with the support of 1,073 people. Using the funds, we first set up a temporary workshop for Wajima-nuri craftsmen so that they can resume their work as soon as possible. Then, we started a project to kintsugi ceramic pieces from Kutani ware, which was also damaged by the disaster.

The works exhibited in this exhibition were created at the temporary studio.

This is a “collaboration work of Kutani Yaki and Wajima-nuri techniques” in which Toshio Ebata and Hiroyuki Ebata, Wajima-nuri maki-e artists, put their brushes on a Kutani Yaki pot before painting, which was originally damaged and could not be sold on the market, and created a new beauty.

Ceramic fragments that might normally have been discarded are now part of the space.

”Kintsugi” is originally used as a technique for restoration, but it has been incorporated as a part of art, and the traditional crafts of Ishikawa Prefecture have been fused together to create a work of art with a story.

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Wajima lacquerware and Kutani ware, which met unintentionally as a result of the earthquake, have found a new world view of crafts never seen before.

Kintsugi is popular as an art form overseas as well, and sometimes people dare to express broken patterns in gold. However, we consider even the broken parts as a form of art, and we decorate them with supple and delicate kintsugi to bring out the natural beauty of the material to the fullest. We received comments from visitors that they were able to catch a glimpse of the genuine craftsmanship and spirit of Japanese artisans, and we were also able to gain new insights.

This exhibition allowed us to communicate our activities to visitors from all over the world through artworks created in Ishikawa Prefecture.

We are sincerely grateful for this wonderful opportunity.