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Books

Carlo Scarpa and Japan

The 1969 was the year that Carlo Scarpa (1906-1978) went for the first time in Japan.

This book is the result of a long research by Mauro Pierconti for his doctoral thesis, of which Francesco Dal Co was the supervisor.

The 1969 was the year that Carlo Scarpa (1906-1978) went for the first time in Japan. The occasion was the inauguration at the Tokyo Furniture Salon of the “Design of Italian Furniture Design”, coordinated by Cassina. The layout of the exhibition was signed by his son, Tobia Scarpa.

Japan, in those years was really a country at the extreme limit of the world, far from us and not much known. Carlo Scarpa, despite having already had a good culture of this part of the East, has long had rare books. One of these “Japanese Notebooks” on which remarks were made of those that confirmed to be his favorite targets. He was a connoisseur of Japan before even visiting him personally.

The story of Pierconti starts from here, with the stages of the journey reconstructed thanks to the comics and slides of Scarpa himself, from Tokyo to Hakone, Kyoto, Nara and finally to Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand. All this is embellished by the stories of the fascinating traditions of Japanese tradition.

The volume presents a series of images that testify the interests, the places, the people, revealing how it was not only the architecture to struck the artist. A decription of vast humanity, mixed with lively curiosity for what was totally new, which had never seen or experienced. For example, we describe the typical techniques of replacing rice paper by focusing on how “in the technique resists mankind, the secret of beauty”.The “working” art in Scarpa’s activity is very influential, infact he conceived the architecture and design as a work of supreme craftsmanship in which there has always been a constant search for formal perfection up to almost invisible to the detail, where nothing is left to chance, each element is designed with extreme care for shapes and materials.

There are also references to Wright and the analysis of how Japan has been absorbed in a different way by the two; the references to his most important achievements such as the Tomba Brion, the use of light and shadow in the fitting for Viani at the Venice Art Biennial of ’52, or in the Gipsoteca of Possagno; the Olivetti store in Piazza San Marco in Venice, the Venezuelan Pavilion and the garden of the Italian Pavilion, both at the Giardini della Biennale.

That was an experience that deeply marked his professional activity. A complex relationship that was consolidated over time, linked Carlo Scarpa to Japan, a country that naturally returned with great attention.

It can be concluded how Pierconti starts his intense research text, citing Okakura:

It would take a great magician able to extract, from the stock of society, a powerful harp whose cords know how to resonate with the touch of genius.”

(T. Okakura, The Book of Tea, New York 1906).