Super Normal: Reviewing curated reflections on normality, the everyday, global exchange, and authorship in early 21st Century industrial design. 

Part 1

What does ‘normal’ mean in the context of designed outcomes, how does it relate to manufacturing, materiality and who decides what makes an object ‘normal’?

Introduction

The exhibition Super Normal took place in 2006 and was curated and organised together by the industrial designers Jasper Morrison and Naoto Fukasawa. The framing of Super Normal, at first seems oxymoronic. For how something at can once come across as exceptionalised and normalised in the same breath. The word ‘super’ as a prefix (Dictionary) exemplifies something, radicalising it into another dimension, ‘normal’ as adjective (Dictionary) on the other hand reduces and democratises the subject refining the sense of ubiquity at play, throughout the course of this paper, both words in conjunction, and separately will serve as key words to drive a deeper understanding of this collection of objects, what their version of normal means, and who gets to define normal. Silvana Annicchiarico, then curator of la Triennale di Milano examines this in the Super Normal book (Fukasawa & Morrison, 2007, pp.5). Gerrit Terstiege meanwhile defines the ‘normal’ in product design as ‘everything that is superficially spectacular’and ‘pseudo-modern’, describing the physical form of commodities (Fukasawa & Morrison, 2007, pp.10-11). Fukasawa and Morrison use the rationale that the super normal object is one not defined by outlandish form-giving or superfluous design but is instead an object that is a joy to use day to day but is valorised through the designer’s refined aesthetic consideration, manufacturing choices or inherent object materiality (Fukasawa & Morrison, 2007, pp.20-29). Lars Muller Publishers delivered an edition that further defines Super Normal through interviews with curators and explores the objects in the exhibit as case studies, cataloguing each (Fukasawa and Morrison, 2007). The exhibit frames ‘Super Normal’ as one that extends between product categories, considering furniture, tableware, homeware, storage containers and transportation devices. It is through these mediums of catalogue, archive material on the exhibit, writings, and interviews that have since taken place with the designers that we are then able to understand some sense of what Super Normal is meant to be. 

Considerations for normalcy and the pursuit, enquiry, distillation, and historiography of the everyday objects, their design, production, and consumption are important and central consideration for most design historians (Walker & Atfield, 1989, pp.58-67). Indeed, this is central to the education of design historians be that in a specific tranche of design education or through specific design historiological studies. It is also important to contextualise why we should return to reviewing Super Normal now. The writing of this paper comes at a time where society now lives with a pandemic that has become normalised to the extent that it is endemic within global society. Sociologist, Danny Dorling’s article frames the individual’s own relation to normalcy in response to the pandemic (Dorling, 2021, online). We have normalised the existence of the novel coronavirus in our everyday lives despite the reverence it should still maintain considering the number of lives it has taken globally (Gallagher, 2022). At one stage the pandemic was truly abnormal and for months on end challenged and altered pre-conceived behaviours of everyone in society; we lived different lives for over two years coming to terms with how to manage, interact with and ultimately co-exist with the virus and as a result our domestic settings. See the Museum of the Homes, oral history of ‘Staying at Home’ which captured a range of voices spending more time in their domestic environments throughout the pandemic. At which stage when our understanding of comfort in relation to the virus altered, we reverted to our ‘normal’ behaviour. Throughout the pandemic years we observed en-masse, notions of what the ‘new-normal’ might be; ‘how might we begin to live in this new world?’ causing the design populous to generate new imaginings of a future permanently altered by the virus (Rawsthorn & Antonelli, 2022). For the majority no longer at extreme risk of the virus, people at large have reverted to their pre-pandemic considerations of what normal daily behaviour and interactions look like. Normality and considerations relating to behaviours (Alexander, 1973, pp.149-151) have as a result been part of the cultural and in turn design zeitgeist for at least the past three years now, though it is these institutional reflections on normalcy (Croce et al, 2022, pp.1-7) that have caused one to consider what normalcy has meant in the world of industrial design, how designers have interacted with this phrasing and how this has then influenced the practice of designers and their output as authors, individuals or organisations exercising political influence on the field.

This paper seeks to deconstruct and understand the Super Normal as an exhibit and to position the theoretical ideals as put forward by the author designers; Fukasawa and Morrison, and their key influences such as Soetsu Yanagi (Fukasawa & Morrison, 2007, pp. 126). Reviews of the Super Normal exhibit at the time capture this in part (Flore, 2011 pp. 404-407). The exhibit regularly features designs that both Fukasawa and Morrison have authored for a range of furniture brands, though this is often not explicitly mentioned. Many of the brands that both have designed for brands might also come across as luxury or niche, designs are featured that are produced for manufacturers based in the formal design heartlands of Northern Italy such as B&B Italia, Alessi and Cappellini. Through the course of researching what is ‘normal’ in design it is important also to consider who we are expecting these objects to be normal for? Who are the consumers in this instance and how do they validate this sense of normal, where are they based, and does their location have a deep impact on these perceptions of normalcy within everyday life (Margolin, 1992, pp. 115) (Wilson et al, 1996, pp. 32). This paper puts forward an argument that Super Normal serves as a late Bauhausian form of international style and design Esperanto; a universal approach to form giving, everyday use, design utility and aesthetics suitable for McLuhan’s vision of the global village (Willmott, 2016). The case is also put forward that this is also a reflection of a socially modernist design practice that sits in contrast to the socially postmodern societies in which we find ourselves. In this paper, this sense of universality will be considered through transnationalism through the work of (Calvera, 2005), (Appadurai, 1996), (Fiss, 2009) to view case studies designed by both Fukasawa and Morrison for international ‘brandless’ brand of everyday homewares and objects, Muji (Foot, 1993). Through examining objects and homewares designed by Fukasawa and Morrison for Muji this also opens the understanding of Super Normal through another object typology – homeware. To consider this fully, the paper will also explore how the brand has been received upon entry to new jurisdictions, how this reflects transnational East Asian modern design (Kikuchi, 2014). Furthermore, this will consider how this plain, anonymous form of design sits in juxtaposition to many of the same authored design objects for other brands by the designers in question have produced for other brands international and are still positioned across the Super Normal sphere.

By developing an understanding of Super Normal and it’s relationship to authorship (Foucault, 1979, pp.28-29) and brand, we might then consider what Super Normal might mean in the future for design and manufacture of consumer goods, where agency in the design process lies and in fact what the role of authorship in design might be? Infrastructures within the design – production – consumption – mediation paradigm (Lees-Maffei, 2009, pp.366) are rapidly being effected by the emergence and adoption of new technologies such as generative and large language model based artificial intelligence (AI); Bevolo and Amati explore the impact of AI on design futures practice (Bevolo & Amati, 2020, pp.213-214). For design historians, it is important to take a consideration of the consumer of designs in this instance, continuing to build on the direction set by Margolin, 1992, pp.116. These questions then pose a confrontation on what Super Normal might mean at this pivotal moment in time, through the design of ‘everyday things’ (Yanagi, 2018, pp.3), what consumers consider ‘good design’ and the role of designer in positioning ‘good design’ when new democratising design infrastructures are being introduced to practice.



Figure 1.
2007. Cover of Super Normal book. Lars Müller Publishers
Authors own image





Figure 2.
2007. Double spread image of Super Normal Exhibit. Lars Müller Publishers. pp 6-7
Authors own image

Chapter 1

Curating‘Normal’

The definition given to Super Normal and in turn the normal object as prescribed by Fukasawa and Morrison is centred on the ephemerality of use in conjunction with the form of the given object. With Morrison’s writing in his photo essay ‘The Good Life; Perceptions of the Ordinary’ (2014), Yanagi’s essays in ‘The Beauty of Everyday Things’ (2018), and Colin & Hecht’s habitual collection in ‘Usefulness in Small Things’, we see the ubiquity in everyday life, and the objects that support that existence generally seen as a force for good. Each of these text’s in their own right position a view on how design supports life, either in the domestic or commercial sphere, and the role of design objects within these spaces. The ‘everyday thing’ (Yanagi, 2018, pp.3) is positioned alongside ‘usefullness’. The title; ‘The Good Life’ references a longing for a way of being and a pace of existence (Wolf, 1997, pp.207-213) . Each of these, including ‘Super Normal’ express a noble desire for the designer to achieve some level of design that through economic accessibility and lack of rarity augments, and makes better the life of the user, either through beauty, use, or both. Using Paul Atkinsons framework on democratic design and do-it-yourself cultures (Atkinson, 2006, pp.3), we can see that one of the key methods for enabling a democratic design is to leave room for the consumer to feed into the process. As we will explore, the views of the designers above builds on a socially individualistic practice of design, without much input from the consumer in design or mediation, where others have taken a more democratic approach.

When reviewing collections and the position of the ‘normal’ we should also look to other examples that could be considered as normal, but might not be overtly labelled as such. This allows one to build a comparative analysis of these different positions of Normal. In his writing ‘Normality’ , Alexander proposes that the normal is centred around one’s self based on the resemblance of certain aspects and also frames normal around Körner’s definition of ‘inexact concepts’ (Alexander, 1973, pp 137). It is this inexact and fuzzy decentralised definition of what ‘normal’is that allows multiple reflections of the concept to exist. In this instance we might be able to get to a sense of normalcy in object collection through looking at a range of object collected under different parameters and without normal be a defined focal point. The book ‘Usefulness in Small Things’ by industrial designers Kim Colin and Sam Hecht looks at the collection brought together by the latter of objects that cost less than a £5 – the ‘Under a Fiver Collection’. This same collection was displayed and exhibited at the Design Museum in London in 2008 when the museum was under the directorship of Deyan Sudjic, the book summarising the collection later followed in 2010.

Colin and Hecht are the founding designers of the studio Industrial Facility – so titled to reference the focus on the facility for industrial production rather than the design duo and individuals working for the studio at large. For this does not remove the sense of authorship around the objects that they design under Industrial Facility, it does position them differently to say Fukasawa and Morrison who’s authorship relating to outputs of their respective studios is placed solely at their feet. With Industrial Facility, there is a hybridity in their perception. Both Colin and Hecht are very much recognised in their industry, both individually receiving the moniker Royal Designer’s for Industry – as bestowed by the Royal Society of Arts (Colin & Hecht, 2017, pp 9.) there is a neutrality and deadpan approach to the titling of their business for which much of their activity and output is carried. This is framed as a ‘Facility for Design’ in Sudjic’s opening notes of the book. Such an approach around brand and image of the studio is positioned alongside the collection later in the introduction which brings reference to Rudofsky’s ‘Architecture without Architects’(Rudofsky, 1964); used to suggest an anonymity in Industrial Facility’s work. This analogy suggests that a lack of ‘pedigree’ surrounding designer or maker might better apply to the artifacts than the collectors, given both Colin and Hecht’s respective figurative status as leaders of the studio and wider significance within their industry. Rudofsky’s use of the word ‘pedigree’in this context (Rudofsky, 1964, pp. 3) is problematic as it might conjure a eugenicist view of architectural leadership even if he is choosing not necessarIly to champion this perspective; particularly as Rudofsky aims to provide a voice to those from under-represented backgrounds, a direct comparison of the ‘pedigreed’and ‘the other’ emerges. The ‘other-ing’ effects of such an approach are explored by Fry, 1989, pp. 16. These efforts to champion and democratise greater anonymity within design processes, and architectures are positive steps, though the use of the terminology around ‘pedigree’would rightfully be considered problematic and othering today. In the introduction for all Sudjic refers to anonymity in the name Industrial Facility in tandem with Rudofsky’s text (Hecht, 2010, pp.12), though he is careful not to reference ‘pedigree’. The reflection of their practice is one that is not necessarily anonymised, but instead disguised and obfuscated through its labelling and designation.

What Rudofsky touches on using ‘pedigree’as a key defining descriptor is an element of being known, either through social, professional, or educational contexts (Rudofsky, 1964, pp. 3). This sense of prominence, adding an element of provenance to the designers work, is something that could be linked to elements of authorship in present day discourse around works of design (Valencia et al, 2021, pp.3) (Heibach et al, 2020, pp.46). The notion of pedigree to some extent arguably still exists within these similar echelons and networked spheres of authorship in modern, studio focussed industrial design practice. Konstantin Grcic for instance started his career in the studio of Jasper Morrison before spawning his own eponymous studio (Phaidon, 2015, online). This is the same Grcic who as we will explore later co-curated an exhibition ‘Design Real’ exploring the normal or everyday through objects and components of mass-production. This act of curation and collection, combined with predominant solo authorship points to a continued self-expression of the author designer where they espouse the ‘everyday’and the ‘normal’ whilst amplifying the self. This act becomes normalised through the highly individualistic society commensurate with the development of many modern western economies. Whilst individualism is argued to have been on the decline by the 1990’s (Maffesoli, 1996) in place of ‘cultural tribes’this persistent reverence for the author individual designer – much like an artist – is somewhat of a hangover by the time of Industrial Facility’s exhibition at the Design Museum in 2008 and during the launch of Super Normal in 2006. Furthermore, this reverence can also be positioned by a social mechanical modernity as put forward by Maffesoli, 1996, pp 6 (figure 3). With the role of industrial designers and their practice being amplified through modernism and the view that the author designer is some form of Pevsnerian pioneer (Pevsner, 1991), it also gestures towards a social model of designers, their inter-designer relationships, and those that they have with manufacturers and consumers. This is perhaps where some discomfort surrounding authorship in design hails from, in that it aligns with a model of ‘the social’ where we in contemporary everyday life are likely more disposed to elements of ‘sociality’. Using this methodology, when we separate aesthetic considerations for designed products from design practice, and to avoid the confusion of the post-modern stylisation of commodities, we can also begin to position design practices as modernist or post-modern. For example, industrial design in the mode of Fukasawa or Morrison, where often the objects are undoubtedly modernist in their styling, their focus on authorship through brand and their studios represents a ‘socially’ modernist design practice. In comparison, design practices related more to aspects of co-design, co-production or collective democratisation such as transition design, or service design become more akin to the labelling of a ‘post-modern design practice focussed much more on ‘sociality’.




Figure 3.
MAFFESOLI, M. 1996. The Time of the Tribes: The Decline of Individualism in Mass Society, London, SAGE Publications: pp 6. Available at: https://solo.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/permalink/44OXF_INST/ao2p7t/cdi_proquest_miscellaneous_839052680 


Following Sudjic’s introduction, Hecht positions the book and collection as being a response to, and the objects an anti-response to globalisation and that the object in the collection respond to‘local needs’ and that globalisation ‘prompts the dissolution of localities’ (Hecht, 2010 pp.21). There is a sense of phenomenology surrounding the objects that exist in his collection almost being a response to Adam Smith’s ‘perception of worth’ in physical goods, who by the 18th century had listed a hierarchy of different production types in comparison to the resultant products lifespan, and how aesthetics can be used to accelerate the proliferation of goods in a capitalist economy. This topic has been explored in by Catherine Labio, who maps the connection to authorship and commodities (Labio, 1997, pp.143). Through this combination it prompts one to consider how said perception of worth is localised and to what extent. Hecht references Smith to ground consumption as a human act within the formation of his collection, this act of consumption similarly is a phenomenon that the exhibit Super Normal, also responds to, despite how design when used as a differentiator in industrial design merely fuels further exemplification (Valencia et al, 2021, pp.9-10). This also recalls the key comparator between these exhibits and the role of authorship, both in curation, and in the collected object. There is so much complexity and obfuscation within globalised value chains and the localities of production that in many either aspirational or ubiquitous goods, the role of the author in the design of the commoditised good is blurred and often hidden (Hodson, 2023, pp. 4). As a collection developed by to a greater extent, author designers; Morrison & Fukasawa’s collection positions the authored object without clear signposting to its author alongside anonymised works, this is seen in the cataloguing section of their exhibition guide, pages 114-125. This also sits in countenance to the d47 exhibition we will later explore where key themes also relate to critical regionalism, through the rooted sense of place of the goods, with the rejection of authorship, and ornamentation (Frampton, 1993, pp.29). Frampton framing aspects of critical regionalism as ‘normative’ and a return to localism through materials. Furthermore, this is supported with Hecht’s continued point that often through offshore production, the workers making goods often also have no local relational understanding or need for what they are producing. When making an argument around the critique of consumption and it’s degradation on the natural world it is easy to make said arguments from the privileged position from which a leading British industrial designer may have; working often for luxury brands, or those that have the financial capability to support multi-person studios on projects. Their shared argument being that ‘things’– at large – need to be redesigned to be better quality and built to last, an argument could be made that this argument is infact driven by commoditisation (Kopytoff, 1986, pp.72), if only we employed the infrastructures, cultures and capabilities to prolong the use, repair and recycling of goods and materials (Spring & Araujo, 2017, pp.135-136).

What ‘Usefulness in Small Things’ does successfully is, rather than look primarily at an ephemeral feature of an object that might be felt through presence or use – as Super Normalposits – Hecht instead chooses to categorise around cost (under a fiver) and scale of object (usefulness in small things), using both titles for the collection interchangeably. There is still an element of the curatorial lens, for initially Hecht termed this as his ‘research collection’ (Hecht, 2017, pp 220.) prior to the foundation of Industrial Facility in 2002, it could also be however that as a result the ‘under a fiver’ collection is a post-rationalisation, coining this title following the formation of the design studio and in time for the Industrial Facility retrospective at the Design Museum (figure 4). Terming this as a post-rationalisation is not necessarily intended as a critique, as the collection is iteratively expanded and added to, and with each new addition, new meaning is likely brought in as well. It is the curatorial view of Hecht that allows the collection to come together, in some respects employing a tourist gaze (Urry & Larsen, 2011) to understand what is new and different from one’s original cultural standing when bringing in a new and different object. This style of iterative curation is also reflected in how the Rapid Response Collection is formed at the V&A museum, another collection with ties to what might be considered Super Normal both through our keywords explored in the introduction to this piece, and as credited by Glenn Adamson in his Normal Design article for magazine Art in America (Adamson, 2017, online). Like Paul Atkinson’s writing on do-it-yourself cultures that exist in acts of designing (Atkinson, 2006), here we can make the argument that so too they exist amongst designers curating either an exhibition of objects in the case of Fukasawa and Morrison, but also with Hecht in his collection of wares. Jonathan Olivares points out in his essay for Zoë Ryan’s book on architecture and design curation ‘As Seen’ that this opportunity would not be possible without postmodern predecessors; despite the direction that both Fukasawa and Morrison take is deeply rooted in a modernist rubric (Ryan, 2017, pp.96). Here they draw on their expertise as designers to aid them in their curatorial journey and formulation of their collections, rather than a historicist or curatorial level of professionalism. Fukasawa, Grcic, Hecht and Morrison’s own curated collections could also be seen as reflections on professionalism and amateurism – as put forward in Beegan & Atkinson, 2008, pp.306; ‘amateur practices— practices that allowed individuals to find personal meaning’ – particularly when framed as elevated designers demonstrating their curiosities as collectors and receiving the opportunity an extended platform to curate.



Figure 4.
Industrial Facility exhibition. The bookshelf at the entrance to the exhibitions that dispensed the gallery guide
Bookshelf design by Graphic Thought Facility
Image accessible at: https://graphicthoughtfacility.com/media/images/projects/design-museum-industrial-facility/v4hXgWnD6lA0_2320x11600.jpg





Figure 5.
Passport notebook, designed by Sam Hecht and Kim Colin of Industrial facility for Muji.
125 x 88 x 24 mm.
Image accessible at https://www.muji.eu/uk/product/passport-notebook-navy-8038




Figure 6.
HEATHCOTE, E. 2008. Industrial Facility. Financial Times, 31 MAY 2008, p.11.
Available at https://link-gale-com.ezproxyprd.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/apps/doc/HS2307207145/GDCS?u=oxford&sid=bookmark-GDCS&xid=72dfdbad




Figure 7.
HEATHCOTE, E. 2007. Discovery of pleasure in anonymity. Financial Times, 23 February 2007, p.11.
Available at: https://link-gale-com.ezproxy-prd.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/apps/doc/HS2307009372/GDCS?u=oxford&sid=bookmark-GDCS&xid=c70c0436


In a 2008 review of both the design studio Industrial Facility and the Under a Fiver collection for the Financial Times (figure 6), journalist Edwin Heathcote is gleaming with praise. He cites the collection as a ‘small miracles of anonymous design’ and Hecht as ‘one of Britain’s subtlest and most sophisticated designers’. Their notoriety and presence within the field is firmly positioned here. Industrial Facility are also a key proponent in the expansion of Muji into the UK and this transnational translation of Japanese design and the Japanese brand into the UK market. Industrial Facility which has been on a retainer with the Japanese brand since 2002 (Hecht & Colin, 2017, pp 220.) are responsible for such designs as the passport notebook (figure 5) and the cities-in-a-bag product depicting small wooden, toy like built environment landmarks that Heathcote in his Financial Times article lauds (figure 6). The passport notebook could indeed also be positioned as one of the most ‘normal’ products that Muji has released, not necessarily due to it’s form, materiality or presence as an everyday object, but more so due to it’s design process and relation to other archetypical objects. In a 2018 interview for the design journal Disegno, Hecht is quoted;

‘the format of the passport becomes a notebook.’

‘The passport memo, one of the studio’s biggest successes, had no heroic origin story. “There wasn’t a single drawing, it was just a conversation over the phone telling them (Muji) what to make and describing it,”

WILES, W. (2018). Stroking a Cat the Wrong Way. Disegno, Journal of Design. pp. 100-6


This suggests that the inception of such a product was relational, a shared connection that could be understood between geographical and cultural boundaries from the UK to Japan through the understanding of the passport as an object and tool, the familiarity of the form with it’s curved corners, and size applicable to fitting into ones pocket. Indeed, the passport could well be one of the most‘normal’ objects in this transnational sense due to it’s ability to help citizens move in the transnational space, cross boundaries, exchange ideas and cultures. The object (figure 5), it’s conception, and symbolism explores a zone without borders, given the simplicity and lack of identification, indeed this could be described as ‘trans-world’(Ernste et al, 2009, pp.577). For all Hecht is critical of the effects of globalisation on the design field, production and manufacture, Industrial Facility are able to make use of the material culture of globalisation and transnational movement and manoeuvre these heuristics imbued in the passport typology towards their own personal gain.

“That was trying to show that there is a form of design education that follows but it’s not prescriptive, it can never be prescriptive and any designer who says it’s prescriptive is deluded. ‘

WILES, W. (2018). Stroking a Cat the Wrong Way. Disegno, Journal of Design. pp. 100-6

In this quote from the same Disegno article, Hecht also shows that the practice for communicating the design of the notebook is somewhat discursive to modern Bauhausian taught design practice, one that follows sketching, prototyping and iteration, to a methodology that is based on intuition, and the relational understanding of archetypical forms and objects. Here Hecht posits that to create more objects of this character may be possible, but primarily that the design, production, and distribution of wares need not to follow this format. Whilst it may be impractical nor possible to pursue this direction for all new designs and creations, Hecht gestures towards a methodology for design and production that is built on ephemerality and relations of material culture that could be a point of further exploration for designers to access easily understood and familiar designs.

Design Curation and Super Normal

Designers, curators and historians have since turned to the terming of Super Normal as either a direct or indirect reference to the exhibition of Morrison and Fukasawa. The exhibition has gone on to be a direct reference for other contemporary and emerging design studios. For instance, the New York industrial design studio formerly known as Visibility, started by Joseph Guerra and Sina Sohrab reference Super Normal, alongside Tanizaki’s ‘In Praise of Shadows’ as key influences of light, materiality, and form in their work; again, pointing to the linkage between Japanese and westernised interpretations of modern industrial design and the exchange of ideas and ideals over the past century (Jow, 2018, online). We can also point to the writing of Glenn Adamson to draw this out further when referencing a new style of collection and curation for design galleries in his essay ‘Curating the Super Normal’ (Adamson, 2017, online). In this text Adamson talks to an emergent style of curation heralded through the works of the Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) in New York; in particular, the exhibition titled and lead by Paola Antonelli where the curatorial focus is less on the designerly object per-se, but more the object of the everyday cultural signifier or icon. This direction is seen in interviews where Antonelli is said to have ‘advocated for an expanded sense of technology’s role in design’ (Lambert, 2020, online). This idea of the iconic signifier being what exemplifies the object in a given cultural moment that symbolises meaning to users and society. Furthermore, previous study in this area has explored the contexts for design curation to take place (Martin, 2021, pp.37-39). Möntmann, 2017 (pp.247) also explores how curation can influence institutional politics. With that in mind, we can see curation as a cultural expression and a determining factor that exceptionalises the regular design object and in turn makes it ’Super Normal’ through Fukasawa and Morrisons eyes. In this style of curation where we also see designer led exhibits such as Konstantin Grcic’s 2009 exhibit‘Design Real’ (figure 8) at the Serpentine in London, miscellaneous objects and component parts abstracted from their regular context, pinned to a wall, put in a glass cabinet or placed on a pedestal are positioned to develop alternate views of the ‘everyday’. It is fair to suggest that say the design object in question is now housed in a permanent culturally significant collection, this is another exceptionalising factor towards the object (Adamson, 2017, online); often as soon as an object enters a collection it is no longer really intended for direct use by patrons, it enters the gallery, museum and collection for prosperity, to preserve the image of the cultural moment and the material culture that then defines it (Loveday, 2022) (Foucault, 1986, pp.26-27). It is pertinent to suggest that indeed the idea of Super Normal can exist in a curatorial sense, for the context of the object changes, the object is exposed to further enquiry, critique and examination but is removed from the materially destructive labours of repeated everyday use and possession. Another example of this – one under-explored by Adamson is the V&A’s ‘Rapid Response’  team who directly collect objects of the cultural moment to enter the V&A’s collection as a snapshot of the designed moment in time, described on the V&A website as ‘a new type of collecting activity at the V&A. Contemporary objects are acquired in response to major moments in recent history that touch the world of design and manufacturing’. Objects from the Rapid Response range from 3D printed titanium handlebars that have been used to set world records, through to individuals crafted objects such as knitted hats that have featured prominently as acts of public protest. An overview on the Rapid Response collection can be seen in Holy William’s 2014 article for The Independent (figure 9). In this respect and counter to Adamson’s argument in his article on Super Normal curation, many of the objects in this collection are deemed as normal because they come from daily life, but the moments that they respond to are not normal. That is the foundational point for why they are in the collection originally, it could be fair to argue that the objects in the Rapid Response collection are of interest because they are extra-ordinary, taken from moments of contemporary history that are superlative, marginal, or exceptional rather than perspectives of the ‘everyday’. Interestingly however, what the Rapid Response collection does do is it breaks free of predefined categories such as tableware, furniture, storage and the like and this seeming disorganisation of the collection is what makes it relatable; featuring things such as mobile phone applications, hats, video game controllers for people of reduced mobility, the niches go on. This is then what makes Rapid Response feel somewhat normal through Adamson’s lens; the variety of life captured in these artefacts and often the peculiarity of the items in the collection. Particularly as life doesn’t easily segment into categories that are reflective of a modernist dogma (Ryan, 2017, pp.96) that the Fukasawa and
Morrison’s collection supports.







Figure 8.
Design real exhibit at the Serpentine, curated by Konstantin Grcic
Serpentine Gallery, London (26 November 2009 – 7 February 2010) Photograph © 2009 Raphael Hefti
Image available at https://www.serpentinegalleries.org/whats-on/design-real/


Figure 9.
WILLIAMS, H. 2014. Need for speed: The V&A’s Rapid Response Unit. The Independent on Sunday, 29 June 2014. P.2.
Available at: https://link-gale-com.ezproxy-prd.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/apps/doc/IM4203013681/GDCS?u=oxford&sid=bookmark-GDCS&xid=92ce503a


Musings on the historiography surrounding subjective reflections on ‘good’ design are put forward by Gay McDonald in their writing on the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) and curated collections on industrial design in the 1950s (McDonald, 2008). The use of ‘good’ by MoMA has been roundly criticised as a largely western centric opinion that focusses on the positioning of the American domestic space in combination with American production power in a cold war landscape (McDonald, 2004, pp.409), this view ignores other cultures, ways of living, needs and as a result design direction. Furthermore, those with the pre-existing codes and reference to cultural landscape were also then best equipped to supplement said understanding of what ‘good’ design was, making this position somewhat more entrenched. Furthermore, this entrenched opinion, though likely not the original point of dissemination, was crucial in creating this judgement around good design being synonymised with terms such as the ‘everyday’. So too, in this instance with Super Normal, that ‘normal’ has been further synonymised with the ‘everyday’ and in turn relations to coded notions around ‘good’ design. The MoMA exhibit ‘Useful Objects of American Design under $10’ (figures 10 & 11) exhibited November 26–December 24, 1940, with a strikingly similar title to both Colin and Hecht’s collection ‘Under a Fiver’ and accompanying book ‘Usefulness in Small Things’ helps continue such a modernist tradition and reframe these perspectives of what ‘good’ design are. Featured in the exhibit were ‘rules’that helped curators and visiting public determine what these perspectives were. It is this that Olivares (Ryan, 2017, pp.96) refers to as the modernist dogma that Super Normal continues and supports in 2006.

Following the thread from MoMA to Super Normal, we can see a trend emerge in the stylistic framing of objects within the exhibit, placed loosely on tables around other seemingly disparate commodities (figure 2). The framing of ‘Super Normal’ also relates to denotations of taste; for who has decided what makes an object ‘Super’, or‘Normal’ and why have they done so? Whilst simultaneously one person’s reflection of a normal object might be different to another corresponding agent from a different social background. To help ground our definition and understanding of material culture and it’s relation to taste, we can turn to Pierre Bourdieu’s A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste, 1984. Bourdieu cites that ‘The ‘eye’ is a product of history reproduced by education.’ (2018, pp 3). Through this, in combination with predetermined modernist notions of what ‘good’ design pertains to be, it is fair to suggest that in both modernist style, educational background, and social design practice, that the determination is that through education and practice, designers turned curators are deemed to have ‘the eye’. This eye however isinevrative, it is not representative, Bourdieu’s reasoning (2018, pp.2) expands that this is down to the exposure to cultural codes at least in education if not upbringing. This paper posits that notions towards ‘normal’ within the boundaries of this text, and put forward by designers are also reflections of their own coded upbringing and what they aim to display in many instances as ‘good’ design, or desired design directions. These codes, or teachings on what ‘good’ versus ‘bad’ design are and how people distinguish this are explored in pshychology in the notion of ‘affective valence’, and whilst intuitive, is a constituent part of what is perceived as preference (Lebrecht et al, 2012, pp.2-4). Furthermore, when considering the designer as curator, current study is bringing into question these ‘deisgnerly ways of knowing’ (Herriott, 2023, pp.72-82). References toward, and descriptions of ‘normal’ objects hereafter are not done so to display a position for what ‘good’ design is or should be, but instead reflect a coded image of what these designers, authors and curators are positioning in that guise. It is worth suggesting that this is then developed as a utopic (Foucault, 1986, pp.24) view of what ‘good’, ‘normal’, or ‘everyday’is; these visions existing within a stylistically and socially modernist heterotopia (Foucault, 1986, pp.22-27).




Figure 10.
Unidentified visitors at the exhibition, “Useful Objects of American Design under $10”
November 26, 1940–December 24, 1940. MoMA Photographic Archive. The Museum of Modern Art Archives, New York. IN117.1
Image available at: https://www.moma.org/calendar/exhibitions/2789?installation_image_index=0



Figure 11.
Installation view of the exhibition “Useful Objects of American Design under $10.” November 26, 1940–December 24, 1940. Photographic Archive. The Museum of Modern Art Archives, New York. IN117.9. Photograph by Soichi Sunami.
Image available at: https://www.moma.org/calendar/exhibitions/2789?installation_image_index=8


To some degree it is the role of a curator to exceptionalise, determine reason, meaning and in turn determine what is in favour and of ‘good’ taste. Their role is to determine what is viewed within a specific context of the gallery or space, to collect and determine connecting themes. Architectural educator Dr Carolina Dayer, (2018, pp.167) determines the act of curation as both a ‘project’ and a ‘projection of a specific perspective into the selection of certain works’. It is with this view of curation that we can categorise Fukasawa and Morrison’s Super Normal. The nature by which objects end up in exhibits, collections and elsewhere is because they are determined to be a discrete way of organising or characterising a thematic element. However, there is an argument that this could be engendered with greater pluralism, for one ‘perspective’ gives one view point, rather than a landscape or systems view. Through critical design and ethnographic approaches, designers elsewhere in Norway have been able to promote a more socialised methodology to allow a heritage museum to observe multiple class and social perspectives (Stuedahl et al, 2021, pp 18-20), this is one that begins to establish a reasoning for post-modern styles of design practice when framed in conjunction with Michel Maffesoli’s social/sociality paradigm of 1996 (Maffesoli, 1996, pp. 6). What Morrison and Fukasawa characterise as Super Normal in their exhibit is neither specific or often rare, many of the objects that they direct their curation around are produced in the thousand, nor were they used at a moment of special cultural significance. In this instance one could be led to the conclusion that it is focussed around their view of what the ’good’ or idealised object is which is in turn a collection not only of their taste, but their vision for what design could or should be. This is further supplemented by their primary jobs as industrial designers where authorship is at the core of their personal brand, business, and value proposition to prospective manufacturing partners (Valencia et al, 2021, pp.10). As a result, Super Normal as an exhibit could in this instance be viewed as a prospectus to the wider industrial production community on their vision, style and ideal towards this utopic normalisation (Levitas, 2010, pp.13).


Problematic Normal

At what point does the use of the word normal to describe everyday designs become problematised? Is it the point at which the designer of the object christens their own work as normal? Is it around the sociocultural, contextual positioning of the designer in question, who fails to position the normal context in their subject matter – be that a designed object or curation of an exhibit? Within this context where Morrison and Fukasawa’s consideration for normal is derived from Yanagi’s own interpretation of a problematised view of imperialist Mingei practices and craft, Super Normalalready has a troubled origin story. Whilst Kikuchi’s review (Kikuchi, 2008) of ‘Kingdom of Beauty’ (Brandt, 2007) does frame criticisms of the methodology used to position key characters in the story of Mingei’s place in East Asian design history (Kikuchi, 2008, pp.130), it does support the critique of Yanagi and his contemporaries ideological imperialist sentiment surrounding the championing of Mingei and Korean craft cultures (Kikuchi, 2008, pp.131).

Yanagi’s writings on design that focus a great deal on the aesthetics, beauty and secondarily on the utility of the everyday object in ‘The Unknown Craftsman’ and ‘The Beauty of Everyday Things’ is not however the sole determinant of Fukasawa and Morrison’s brand of Super Normal. In one sense it is not the sole problematising factor behind their brand and curation either, though it’s seminality toward the exhibit is a significant part of it. Furthermore, one is led to believe that this problematisation is not totally driven by an ignorance of design history and an inability to distill that into design practice, as explored earlier, Morrison has frequently written on the ephemerality of the everyday in wider writings as well as more historiological writings on everyday and craft objects in Japan; these views are captured in a series of 6 articles Morrison wrote for Japan Times in 2016 chronicling a range of objects situated in Japan. This leads one to believe that Morrison is not ignorant to the context and design history that leads to his own brand and stylistic tendency of design, indeed Morisson is a prolific writer on design methodologies and culture, dedicating part of his website to essays and writing, referencing his own 17 published books. Morrison’s writing extends to articles on the exact point of authorship in design; we see his contribution from an essay called ‘Immaculate Conception – Objects without Author’ (figure 12), where he also refers to ‘objects of pedigree’. We can also see a 1991 article ‘The Unimportance of Form’  (figure 13) by Morrison exploring the designers role in intuitively giving form to wares. Both Morrison, (and Fukasawa in figure 14) – give a view of their own design practices – showing their awareness of their own positionality within the design industry; for it is their respective positions within the field of industrial design that not only provide them with the voice to shape design discourse, but their relationships with respective brands, manufacturers, producers, critics, journalists and curators. This positionality contributes to the sense of power and influence that they can exert over other mature designers, design discourse, aesthetic movements, and notably other designers earlier in their career that might aspire to have similar careers to the ones that they themselves have had (Baldwin, 2000, pp.33) This is also seen in Julier’s ‘Domains of Design Culture’ framework (Julier, 2000, pp.4), figure 16. The Super Normal exhibit, in a sense, becomes a good demonstrator for the power that authorship in design might have, when paired with Julier’s writing on design culture and the culture of designers, it is also probably what makes it appealing to many aspiring young designers – the desire to be different, exceptional and have the opportunity to pronounce one’s own voice (Julier, 2000, pp.35-36). The dangers however are clear to see, through that which the author designer stipulates; what they believe to be their own brand and vision for the normal within a contemporary context, we also normalise a problematised design history.



Mingei

When considering the scale at which design operates and even within the transnational, international context that this paper situates Super Normal, it is worthwhile distinguishing the difference between design directions and framing of Japanese design as framed by Sarah Teasley in ‘Designing Modern Japan’ (Teasley, 2022). This is to also consider the localised aspects of design which influence beyond national borders to international and transnational levels of interpretation. For instance, Japanese craft is one example with many different regional styles therein – the same is true and could be said for other parts of East Asia. However, in design discourse Mingei typically ends up being vehicle to discuss Japanese crafts at large, however problematically. The Mingei movement in Japan was popularised by Soetsu Yanagi, but indeed is represents crafts from all over East Asia (Kikuchi, 1997, pp.352-353) going on to have an influence on European Modernist design through the likes of Charlotte Perriand (Sendai, 2021, pp.553-555). Kikuchi’s extensive writings in this space positioning Yanagi’s representation of Mingei as cultural imperialism are helpful to frame this (Kikuchi, 1994, pp.263). These craft objects might be, more decorative than the industrially produced product but are reliant on the skilled handicraft of the maker in question though Shigemi Inaga helps us to consider that this might be a mis-contextualisation put forward by Yanagi in getting us to view these objects primarily as objects of beauty and not of utility (Inaga, 1999). Indeed, this is one of the great contradictions one can observe upon visiting the Japan Folk Craft Museum (Nihon Mingeikan) in Tokyo, considering the curation of the objects and the wider preservationist style that frames much of the curatorial and visiting experience; looking at objects through bespoke cabinetry absolved of much description either of object, use or maker, indeed, this is a highly aesthetically driven direction. Aims to rectify contemporary discourse around Mingei are not helped further still by prominent design journalists in Western media framing Minegi as both ‘Japanese objects’ and ‘marginalized since the industrial revolution’ as Alice Rawsthorn did in her 2006 article for the International Herald Tribune (and preserved for current availability on the New York Times website) covering the launch of the Super Normal exhibit (figure 15). Yanagi’s interpretation of Mingei (Yanagi, 2018, pp.3) sits alongside and has been a large influence for Japanese industrial design, but also to makers and designers internationally. This paper also examines and builds on how Mingei has had and influence much further afield than the Japanese border through industrial design – whether that includes Yanagi’s contemporaries such as Bernard Leach and Michael Cardew (Leach’s first student following his return from Japan) (de Wall, 1997, pp.355-362); or more contemporary influences such as Fukasawa and Morrison themselves. Within the discourse of a nation’s representation of a type of design, be that industrial or otherwise, there are distinct stylistic sub sections as well. It is important to not characterise all of Japanese design as being the same, or indeed to give the impression that Muji is the hallmark example of Japanese design, because it does not serve this singular role. Furthermore, nor is the intention to standardise the definition of Japanese design, particularly as the richness that exists withing the national boundary and context for different styles and methods is of real value. As a result, the reference to Japanese design in this paper speaks to design that happens in Japan or by Japanese people or from Japanese companies, rather than a crude attempt to homogenise a definition for what is characterised stylistically and materially by design in, and from Japan. This serves to better understand how the influences of Mingei and other characterisations have served as influencing motions beyond an individual nation’s borders within the local, national and transnational context.



Figure 12. 
Immaculate Conception – Objects without Author, Jasper Morrison,  Published in Ottagono No. 118. 1996
Image available at: https://jaspermorrison.com/publications/essays/immaculate-conception-objects-without-author




Figure 13.
The Unimportance of Form, Jasper Morrison,
Published in Ottagono No. 100. 1991
Image available at: https://jaspermorrison.com/media/pages/publications/essays/the-unimportance-of-form/0b7a4124dd-1622816652/jm-essays-ottagono100-01aa.jpeg




Figure 14.
The Definition of Good Design | Designer Naoto Fukasawa 深澤直人| Louisiana Channel (2022) [av], Louisiana Channel [Japan] 2022. [Online]. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZBKfjHQoUIU



Figure 15.
RAWSTHORN, A. 2006. Celebrating the beauty of ‘super normal’ little objects of everyday life. International Herald Tribune, 12 June 2006, p.6.
Available at; https://link-gale-com.ezproxy prd.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/apps/doc/QFKWEX826963197/GDCS?u=oxford&sid=bookmark-GDCS&xid=b59b53ce



Figure 16.
JULIER, G. 2000. The culture of design, London, Sage Publications: pp.4.


Archetypical Re-design

WithSuper Normal, a question remains surrounding the need to stylistically re-design things which Fukasawa and Morrison deem as ‘good’ design. Fukasawa in figure 14. Spends more than 14 minutes detailing his view on this. Glassware is another category of object that comes up in the Super Normal exhibit; which ranges from furniture, kitchenware, homeware, footwear, electronics, storage and transport. With glassware, again we see the championing and the celebration of Soetsu Yanagi through his sake glasses. Object ‘48’ in the exhibition is an antique wine glass without name or authorship. Potentially this contributes to it’s own version of normality, the glass almost representing a lack of belonging to a manufacturer, retailer, designer, with it’s simplistic form and therefore anonymity through lack of positionality. This builds upon Kopytoff’s understanding that commodities, for which most of the objects in the exhibition are as a curated collection of design objects, that these are cultural markers ’derived as a ‘certain thing’ (Appadurai, 1986, pp 64). Morrison is quoted in Rawsthorn’s article covering the Super Normal exhibit discussing the glasses found in a flea market (Rawsthorn, 2006, pp 6). ‘

“At first it was just their shape that attracted my attention,” recalls Morrison. “But slowly, using them every day, I noticed their presence in other ways. If I use a different type of glass, for example, I feel something is missing in the atmosphere of the table. If I catch a look at them on the shelf they radiate something good.” (Rawsthorn, 2006, pp 6)

What Morrison describes here is an ephemerality that is captured – or sought to be captured – in the curation and direction of the Super Normal exhibit. On one hand, Super Normal represents something that on initial impression is captured in archetypical form, but later through use captures a comfortable presence and ambivalence. From the Super Normal book that accompanied the exhibition it is difficult to understand which designer curatorially contributed which objects to the exhibition, given the style of curation in the‘open form’ (Szreder, 2017, pp.53). However, if we turn to the flea market wine glass (figure 16) there is a striking resemblance to Morrison’s goblet family that would come 2 years later. Through Morrison’s aim to design for an archetype then, what does this mean for a modern rendition of an almost identical design, ‘authored’ (Lupton, 1997, pp.13) by Morrison for Italian brand Alessi which was realised and released to the market under their respective monikers in 2008 (figure 18). Alessi, the same manufacturer which already produced a design by Italian designer Ettore Sottsass of a similar looking, though noticeably different wine glass in the year 1999. Though the latter of these glasses has differing details such as a tapered stem and a flared rim, what unifies these is a shared typology from which they are working from; an existing archetype of a wine glass come goblet. Sottsass’ glassware (figure 19) is comfortable within the postmodern style for which the latter half of his career is famous for. Morrison’s however is positioned within the stylistic custom for which he was developing a style around in the mid noughties, one that is simplistic, where the flair in the design is restrained. Through handling the Alessi goblet by Morrison one understands the finesse, and subtlety achieved through manufacture and industrial production and how such subtlety is repeated in uniform fashion from item to item. The uniform, but delicate nature of the glass is arguably what separates it from the so similar flea market design from which it is clearly drawn. In this instance it would be fair to contemplate what Morrison’s authorship is contributing to design discourse, perhaps the goblet is curating and bringing back to modern manufacturing and consumption an archetypical ephemerality and nostalgia (Fukasawa & Morrison, 2007, pp.92).

Similarly, to Muji’s brand of object – which will be explored more in chapter 2, this speaks to a lack of fashioning, but more to an inherent utility in the design of these objects. To explore further the lack of trend within these objects we also need to consider who these particular designs are appealing to and why. On one hand we have the endurance of the antique form, but the fashionability of both manufacturer, brand, and author designer within the marketplace. This raises a crucial point in relation to authorship, as to what might be considered as a normal object. This case study offers up a reappropriation of an anonymised, antique design, also reappropriating the desired context of the glass from the flea market, to the archive, to the designerly brand oriented manufacturer. The Super Normal book Morrison states that the glass is ‘probably 100 years old’ and ‘probably made for a French bar’ (Fukasawa & Morrison, 2007, pp.92). It is with this same energy, sense of context and place that Morrison is also trying to re-appropriate a new use context for the goblet range.




Figure 17.
2007. Image of ‘flea market wine glass’. Lars Müller Publishers. pp 93



Figure 18.
Goblet, 2008
Designed by Jasper Morrison
Manufactured by Alessi SPA from glass
160mm x 165mm x 150mm
Available at https://www.twentytwentyone.com/products/inevr-jasper-morrison-glass-family-goblet?variant=29459443875951




Figure 19.
Ginerva Wine Glass
Designed in 1996 by Ettore Sottsass
Manufactured by Alessi SPA from glass in 2000
160mm x 160mm x 950mm
Accession number: C.113-2001
Available at https://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O64403/inevra-wine-glass-sottsass-ettore/



A Visit to d47 Gallery, Tokyo




Figure 20.
Sampling Product exhibition poster
d47 Museum, 14 July 2023-15 October 2023, Tokyo, Japan


As part of the research for this paper I conducted as visit to d47 gallery in Tokyo. On the 8th story of a tower in Shibuya City, the gallery represents designs from the 47 different prefectural regions of Japan, and in so doing the respective craft cultures and differentiation present within each. D47 gallery is operated by the team of D&DEPARTMENT Inc.; an 80 person organisation that champions design, industry and craft from across the many prefectures of Japan either through stores where they sell food and homewares, exhibitions where they champion design, or publishing tourist journals as a medium for both, with each journal focussing on an individual prefecture (D&DEPARTMENT Inc., 2023, online). The main purpose of referencing this gallery and exhibit is to position how different aspects of normalcy in object production and curation are still being carried out in a very contemporary sense (figures 21 & 22).

The d47 gallery puts on a rotation of different shows throughout the year, the one on at the time of writing this work was focussed on objects produced in Japan but taken from different industries and finding them an alternate or different purpose through the sphere of the domestic lens – typically as some form of container, storage object or item of furniture. With many of these objects, this ultimate purpose is not revolutionary or ground-breaking, but where the interest in the positioning of these objects does lie is the setting in which these are then being imagined for their new use. At the time of writing the shop in Kyoto also had a small exhibition on indigo dying practices, showcasing the diversity of their focus (figure 24). In d47’s Tokyo gallery, the exhibition images taking these objects either from work, commercial or industrial settings and tries to offer them a new place within the domestic. While the proposal of new contexts was not necessarily novel, it does indicate that director of d47 Gallery, Kenmei Nagaoka deemed the objects to have qualities that would allow them to make such an adaptation, a reflection of amateurish approaches with reference to the curation and DIY cultures (Atkinson, 2006, pp.2) that exist in design ‘as part of daily life’ (Nagaoka, 2023, online). These objects range from many things that might hold existing cultural status in Japan; such as the tins used to store tea leaves produced by SyuRo, or earthenware jars used to catch octopus; Takotsubo. Alternatively, the objects sourced from across the nation might hold specific relevance to individual industries; such as large scale petri-dishes, or plastic storage containers for use in the automotive industry. Nagaoka, defines this approach as ‘sample products, created without creating’ (Nagaoka, 2023). What unifies them and this proposed context switch by the curator is what Fukasawa or Morrison might determine as ‘Super Normal’, however, what further distinguishes them from this definition of the 2006 exhibit (Fukasawa, 2007, pp.99-101), is that each object in this exhibit is framed without the authorship of either a household name manufacturer, distributor, sales network or designer, and more on the utility of DIY everyday practice allowing the user to explore their own designerly tendencies.

What then makes these objects ‘Super Normal’ as Fukasawa and Morrison put forward? One can point to the paranormal materiality and form of some of the wares. We can look at the example of the ‘Takotsubo’ jar (figure 23), traditionally used to catch octopus, produced by Yamaguchi Tanaka Ceramics (D&DEPARTMENT Inc., 2023, online). These vessels are typically made by hand, from a glazed earthenware. The ones displayed in the exhibit were all different, displaying variance in their glazing, colour distribution and texture; of which was rough throughout all examples. It’s fair to say in the examples present at the exhibition this was imperfect, not to a fault either – these objects do not need to be uniform, precise, controlled, or perfected. The wall thickness of each pot was around and often exceeding 10mm. This combined materiality and form of the Takotsubo is arguably what makes it Super Normal through Fukasawa and Morrison’s definition (2006, pp.99-101). It has a recognisable and traditional form of a vessel, vase, container or jar and indeed the ‘domesticated’ example given in the gallery was used to store brushes, but it differentiates and exemplifies itself through it’s thicker than standard wall thickness for domestic ceramics, rougher than standard commercially acceptable smooth or glossy forms we see and are often popularised by large industrial and widely available commercial ceramics (figure 25). Still able to be made at scale, these takotsubo vases – as stated in the exhibit – are at risk of dying out; becoming an extinct species, in exchange for industrial, machine manufactured alternatives and different techniques for catching octopuses – such as trawling. What the exhibit proposes at large is that changing the context of use for these goods from commercial or industrial to domestic can reposition how people think about these craft practices and industrialised production processes. The sample product line as envisioned by Nagaoka aims ‘to use products for a long time and reusing them with minimal processing are environmentally friendly actions.’ (D&DEPARTMENT Inc., 2023, online).

Ultimately what this supposes is that context is a predetermining factor in whether an object can or should be considered Super Normal. The designer, their agency within the design, manufacturing, consumption, and mediation (Lees-Maffei, 2004, pp.366) process also determines what power they have to influence the end consumer or user. Using McCracken’s framework (figure 26) for‘the movement of meaning’ (1986, pp.72) we build and develop an understanding for how these objects are also repositioned through a cultural and consumerist context. Through the removal of the designer as curator in this context of this collection of objects, what the exhibition at d47 proposes is the normalisation of these wares within a different context. Is this therefore what should also go into the determination and definition of the Super Normal object; the removal of authorship, a focussed examination on context, and the designed object’s ability to be able to transcend context? It is this transcendence of context through materiality and form that surely makes the object ‘Super Normal’ – the ability to exist in multiple contexts ‘normally’at once for a variety of different users, not just exemplar best cases of industrially produced objects for commercial sale to consumers that have alternative, differentiating characteristics in their form or materiality.



Figure 21.
Sampling Product exhibition, Tokyo, Japan, July 2023
d47 Museum





Figure 22.
Sampling Product exhibition, Tokyo, Japan, July 2023
d47 Museum





Figure 23.
Takotsubo Jars
Designed and produced by Yamaguchi Tanaka Ceramics
Sampling Product exhibition, Tokyo, Japan, July 2023
d47 Museum, 14 July 2023-15 October 2023




Figure 24.
Indigo dyeing exhibition
D&Department Shop, Kyoto, Japan, July 2023




Figure 25.
Vase in hand glazed terracotta, giving a unqiue finish for each item.
Glazed Terracotta Vase ,Off-white
Produced in Portugal by Muji
Image available at https://www.muji.eu/uk/product/glazed-terracotta-vase-20cm-17984.muji




Figure 26.
MCCRACKEN, G. 1986. Culture and consumption: a theoretical account of the structure and movement of the cultural meaning of consumer goods. The Journal of consumer research, 13:pp. 72. Available at: https://solo.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/permalink/44OXF_INST/ao2p7t/cdi_proquest_journals_222819421


Written by Peter Webster


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