The New Craft House

Shinkogeisha — the name translates as New Craft House — designs and makes objects in Kyoto under the term shin-kogei, a new craft. The argument, set out in a philosophy text dated August 2020, is that mass production divided labour so thoroughly that people lost the ability to make the objects around them, while 3D printers and the internet have returned the means of production to individuals.

Resin is central to the practice. A material that symbolised industrial mass production becomes, at the scale of a 3D printer, something closer to a craft material, and the studio works across the digital and analogue without fixing a border between them. Shinkogeisha is run by Hiroshi Mitachi, Ryo Kosaka and Mariko Asakura, and develops objects, furniture and research projects from its base in Kyoto.