Bloomsbury Encyclopedia of East Asian Design

Product Description The Encyclopedia of East Asian Design is the first comprehensive publication to focus on East Asian design and its histories. Although definitions of design in Asia are multiple, fluid and historically contingent, the disparate cultures within this vast landmass have long produced arts and crafts, interior, graphic, and design objects for domestic, regional, and global consumption. The encyclopedia provides in-depth, critically informed coverage of these practices, products, and the interpretive issues pertaining to them. The work is organised by country to reflect specific regional and national histories and geographies. Within these geographies, traditions, histories, theories and practices as well as key issues in modern and contemporary design are considered. The topics covered in these volumes range from ceramics and textiles, interior and architectural design, to environmental and sustainable design. Review This volume is a rich compendium of knowledge about East Asian design. Contributions from multiple authors help to establish the importance of design from this region to the field's world history. --Victor Margolin, Professor Emeritus of Design History at the University of Illinois at Chicago, USABloomsburys new Encyclopedia of East Asian Design provides a very welcome impetus for achieving a wider and more informed understanding, knowledge and awareness of the histories, cultures, politics, economics, and meanings of design in China, Hong Kong, Japan, Korea, Macao, Mongolia and Taiwan. Edited by established East Asian specialists Hirohiko Fujita and Christine Guth, the volume contains essays by more than 100 researchers and scholars, many of them emerging voices in the history of design set alongside more widely-known and established academics and curators drawn from around the world. Importantly, indigenous scholars from each of the countries covered have made a significant number of these contributions. Since the 1990s considerable energies have been spent in extending the focus of the cartography of design beyond a largely Anglophone and European dominated perspective. This significant volume marks another stage in so doing. --Jonathan M. Woodham, Professor Emeritus of Design History at the University of Brighton, UKI was so pleased to hear about the publication of the Encyclopedia of East Asian Design. From a Japanese perspective it is easy to think that our clothes and crafts are unique to Japan, but of course they have many influences and origins from the rest of the Asian continent. This encyclopedia explores the transition of such design from a broad and encompassing perspective, and I have great hope that further research will develop as a result of this volume. --Akiko Mabuchi, Director General of the National Museum of Western Art, Japan About the Author Haruhiko Fujita is Professor Emeritus at Osaka University, Japan, and Professor of Aesthetics and Design History at Kobe Design University, Japan.Christine Guth led the Asian design history strand in the V&A/RCA History of Design Programme from 2007 until 2016.