Japan · Basketry / Bamboo Craft
堺竹工芸 (Sakai take-kōgei); 田辺竹雲斎 (Tanabe Chikuunsai)
Bamboo basketry and sculpture practiced in Sakai, Osaka Prefecture, by the Tanabe family across four generations of the artist name Chikuunsai ("bamboo cloud master"). Tanabe Chikuunsai I (1877–1937) trained in Osaka's literati basket tradition, in which baskets for flower arranging and sencha tea were made in the Chinese manner, and moved his studio to Sakai in 1910. The line moved from fine, openwork baskets (Chikuunsai II) to abstract sculptural forms (Chikuunsai III) to large site-specific installations (Chikuunsai IV, born 1973), alongside traditional work shown at the Japan Traditional Art Crafts Exhibition. In January 2021 Chikuunsai IV won the first Mingei Bamboo Prize, organized by the Musée Guimet and Galerie Mingei in Paris, for Disintegrated Bamboo Daruma, a woven bamboo version of a figure normally made of papier-mâché. This record covers the Sakai lineage; the Beppu tradition is documented separately (CRAFT-0477).
Risk level: Vulnerable · Not inscribed
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