CRUST is a special series born of “Japan Creative,” a project developed in 2011 to share Japanese aesthetics and traditional craft with the world, bringing together Japanese manufacturers and both local and overseas creators. We collaborated with London-based design unit “Raw Edges” to create the table and stools known as CRUST. The designers were inspired to make something unprecedented after experiencing the creative environment of Asahikawa. The CRUST series’ products, incorporating innovative structure and color usage, express a fresh, imaginative side of CondeHouse.
A Unique Expression of Japanese Aesthetics
The city of Asahikawa and its surrounding region is known as the heart of the woodworking and furniture industry in Japan. Its rich natural resource provides much of the raw material for Asahikawa furniture makers. Raw Edges visited the CondeHouse Asahikawa factory and experienced firsthand the process by which this wood is carefully made into furniture by our passionate craftspeople. Using the unique characteristics fostered by CondeHouse for the past 50 years as a basis, Raw Edges worked to develop products that would be able to portray a new, unforeseen aesthetic expression.
While the products in this series have a simple round or elliptical form, creating them takes a coordinated process of peeling and joining together wood and finely shaping it into smooth curves. Taking inspiration from the thought process of our founder Minoru Nagahara, who sought to combine Japanese lifestyle with the design approach he learned in Europe, Raw Edges similarly aims to express a “fusion of different cultures” through the design of overlapping Japanese Oak that is present in each CRUST product.
