{"product_id":"komura-setsudai","title":"Komura Setsudai","description":"\u003cp class=\"font-claude-response-body break-words whitespace-normal\"\u003eKomura Settai, with his singular design idiom—the so-called \"Settai style\"—took the world by storm, breaking new ground in bookbinding, illustration and stage design alike.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"font-claude-response-body break-words whitespace-normal\"\u003eHis active years, spanning the Taisho era (1912–1926) through to the pre-war Showa era, were a time of great flourishing before the Pacific War, when popular culture was very much in full bloom.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"font-claude-response-body break-words whitespace-normal\"\u003eYet it was also an era in which the old harmony with nature, and the sense of beauty attached to the four seasons since Edo times, was slipping away.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"font-claude-response-body break-words whitespace-normal\"\u003eSettai's work captured this vanishing face of Edo with real beauty. It was, indeed, his meeting with the great writer Kyoka Izumi that set him on his path in bookbinding, illustration and design more broadly. From then on, the world of Kyoka's literature became a great magnetic field, drawing out Settai's singular beauty throughout his career.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"font-claude-response-body break-words whitespace-normal\"\u003eAnother wellspring of Settai's aesthetic sensibility seems to have been his upbringing in Nihonbashi Hinokimonocho, where he spent his formative youth. Hinokimonocho at that time was a flower town still steeped in the atmosphere of old Edo, and it was, as it happens, the setting of Kyoka Izumi's novel \"Nihonbashi\"—the very work that launched Settai's career as a binding artist.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"font-claude-response-body break-words whitespace-normal\"\u003eThe acclaim this binding received was, one suspects, down to the fact that Settai recalled, with every sense, the sounds and smells of everyday life, right down to the breeze drifting through the back alleys.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"font-claude-response-body break-words whitespace-normal\"\u003e— Miyako Hirayama (Curator, The Museum of Modern Art, Saitama)\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Different than Magma","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":55608837472632,"sku":"9784861523243","price":18.95,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0285\/4760\/files\/14577365_1000.jpg?v=1784303230","url":"https:\/\/magma-shop.com\/products\/komura-setsudai","provider":"Magma","version":"1.0","type":"link"}