SHIRO KURAMATA: 1934-1991 edited by Makoto Uyeda with essays by Andrea Branzi, Francois Burkhartdt, Arata Isozaki, Ettore Sottsass and Yokoyama Tadashi

Kuramata Design Office / Hara Museum of Contemporary Art, 2008, First edition, 209 pp., 9" X 12", Softcover with clear plastic jacket

Fine

Drawn to the unusual, the sensual, and the ephemeral, Shiro Kuramata spent much of his career reassessing the relationship between form and function in furniture design. In his designs for tables, chairs, and lamps, Kuramata imposed his own versions of surreal and minimalist idioms on everyday objects.

Kuramata earned degrees in architecture and interior design from Tokyo Polytechnic and the Kuwazawa Institute for Design. From 1957 to 1963 Kuramata worked for Maysuya, the Tokyo department store, before founding his own design practice in 1965.