misfits' architecture: The Beauty of Everyday Things, 2024-Feb-4 by Graham McKay

For the past hundred years we’ve had people championing machine manufacture and value-adding design for objects that did perfectly well without it. What we’re left with is poorly designed and overpriced goods. Yanagi’s criteria don’t really tell us anything we weren’t already half aware of.

made by anonymous crafts people: This is in direct opposition to the culture (cult?) of designer goods in which the worth of objects is determined by who designed them and not by how they were made. True, artisan silversmiths and goldsmiths existed prior to the cult of the designer but they were both designer and smiths – craftspersons – and diminishing their role was essential to establish the cult of the designer.