Mingei in Geneva

A systematic collection of Japanese folk ceramics

Damien Kunik

With 143 pieces, the collection of Japanese folk ceramics owes its presence at the MEG to the immense acquisition effort, carried out over several decades on four continents by the ceramologist Horace van Berchem (1904-1982). The initial Japanese collection, integrated in 1955, was enriched in the early 1960s by Claude Albana Presset (born 1934), following her long research stay in the archipelago. A small subset in the collection of 3000 pottery pieces gathered under the aegis of H. van Berchem for the benefit of the MEG, the series of Japanese pieces deserves a special attention. It reflects the criteria for assessing a form of material culture in human societies that has influenced both the history of Japanese ethnology and that of international art history. In its composition, it provides an overview of the range of styles and techniques of Japanese ceramics of common use, but also sheds light on the scientific approach that directed the work of a former key collaborator of the museum.

Horace van Berchem and Claude Albana Presset

Horace van Berchem (1904-1982) was active at the MEG from the 1950s to the 1970s. Although the MEG's worldwide collection of folk ceramics is commonly named after him, the enormous acquisition work is in fact the result of a collaborative effort initiated by Horace van Berchem who is, in many cases, its one and only patron. His sources of funding, both for the enrichment of the fund and for his travels and research trips, have usually been personal. In return for this investment, the ceramologist benefited from a surprising position within the institution. He was appointed volunteer curator in charge of the Museum's Ceramics Department. The department he was in charge of also had a gallery dedicated to ceramics in the former MEG building on Boulevard Carl-Vogt. Today, the collection of folk ceramics, and the large collection of photographs and archives that complement it, is divided into geographical regions and has lost some of its historical coherence without losing its aesthetic, scientific and anthropological value. A publication still today makes it possible to appreciate the extent of the scientific work carried out by this former collaborator and to redraw the contours of the original collection (van Berchem 1968).

History of the MEG's Japanese Folk Ceramics Collection

The collection of Japanese folk ceramics was born in two stages. The first is characterised by a particularly rare mode of acquisition, that of an exchange between the Ethnographic Museum of Geneva and the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Of the more than 14,000 pieces now kept by the Asia department, the inventories list only three exchanges. The first concerns an anecdotal Thai theatre mask. The second exchange is the one we are interested in. Under the direction of H. van Berchem, the MEG brought together 75 pieces of folk ceramics from the Geneva region known as "poterie de Colovrex" (Colovrex pottery), mainly produced by the Knecht workshop in Chambésy, and sent them to Japan. During the same year, Japan sent to the MEG an identical number of pieces representing a systematic range of styles and techniques from the Japanese archipelago. The third exchange still happened under the direction of H. van Berchem and under similar arrangements, but this time with the Palace Museum in Beijing as an institutional partner. At the end of the Swiss-Japanese exchange, that is 1955, the Ethnographic Museum of Geneva organised an exhibition entitled "Céramique rustique japonaise et genevoise" (Japanese and Geneva rustic ceramics).

The Japanese collection then grew with Claude Presset's trip to Japan in 1960-1961, during which she acquired 68 pieces. These pieces, integrated in 1961, also gave a more interesting scientific colour to the initial batch, since this MEG collaborator worked from then on to illustrate, through her knowledge of the field, the nature of Japanese ceramics gathered in two stages at the MEG. Her travel diary illustrates in detail an important moment in the history of Japanese craftsmanship. Among the ceramics acquired in 1960 are a few artifacts of notable importance. This is the case, for example, of the pieces purchased from the workshop of the potter Hamada Shôji (1894-1978), located in Mashiko (Tochigi prefecture). Hamada, a founding member of the Mingei movement which will be discussed later, was awarded the title of "Living National Treasure" by the Japanese Ministry of Culture in 1955.

Folk ceramics vs. luxury ceramics

When Horace van Berchem planned to build up a worldwide collection of folk ceramics at the MEG in the 1950s, the endeavour was almost unprecedented on an international scale. In his 1968 book, the ceramologist emphasises his interest in pottery that he describes as "popular and traditional" (van Berchem 1968: 3). It is these two terms that should be the focus of our attention. In contrast to the collections of sumptuary ceramics, white-glazed earthenware or porcelain, which are the subject of many prestigious exhibitions, the author notes the lack of interest in "common earthenware" (ibid.) pottery on the part of museums and collectors. Conversely, he evokes his interest in techniques that from the "Neolithic period to the present day [present] a picture of striking continuity."(ibid: 6). He adds to this that "this art, most often perfectly natural, whose moving beauty, ignoring the passing fashion trends and thus rendered, one might say, permanent, deserves all our interest."(ibid.). In view of these sensitive considerations, the author nevertheless acknowledges the difficulty of establishing a systematic typology of popular and traditional ceramics, but insists on the need to build up in Geneva such a collection of ordinary pieces, which are by nature heterogeneous. In sum, the project of a universal collection of traditional folk pottery at the MEG is therefore as ambitious as it is empirical.

While it is true that regional and national collections of folk ceramics similar to those valued by H. van Berchem exist here and there in the world, as he himself acknowledges, such a sampling on a global scale remains a rarity. The absence of such collections is certainly to be understood from the difficulty of finding common denominators between 'popular and traditional' features in the cultural variety of human societies. The van Berchem collection thus presents pottery that is utilitarian in one country, religious in another, coarse or technically complex depending on the regions studied, and mixes functions, types of know-how and production chains, cooperative or individual. Finally, these are often opportunities that also serve to enrich the MEG collections.

Between ethnology and artistic emotion, the Japanese Mingei movement

At the same time, in Japan, a similar ambition has an ascending destiny. Folk handmade ceramics are on the upswing and it is inevitable that we must mention here a very successful first attempt to give substance to a traditional folk ceramics collection in Japan in the first decades of the 20th century.

At the origin of this effort is the now famous art critic Yanagi Muneyoshi (1889-1961), also known as Yanagi Sôetsu, a central figure in the revival of handicrafts in East Asia. It is a cry from the heart that is at the origin of his passion for the subject. Sensitive and humanist, Yanagi was deeply shocked by Japan's treatment of its Korean neighbour and in 1919 wrote a series of virulent articles (Kunik 2014) against the violence of Japanese imperialism in a major national daily newspaper. Japan was then the first colonial power in Asia, and in that year Japanese exactions in colonized Korea reached an unprecedented scale. Yanagi already had a large readership in the arts world and succeeded in creating a movement of sympathy for the Korean cause in Japan. It was on this occasion that he discovered the folk arts of that country and therefore campaigned for the specific creation of a national folk art museum in Seoul, in complete opposition to the policy of cultural assimilation pursued at the time by the Japanese state. For Yanagi, the praise of craftsmanship was an act of activism.

When the museum opened in Korea in 1924, Yanagi abandoned its primary speciality, that of Western art history, to focus on Japanese folk arts. Turning to a field of study as little regarded in Japan as Horace van Berchem's 'popular and traditional ceramics' in Geneva, Yanagi gave birth to an artistic and aesthetic movement known today as 'mingei', a neologism designating folk (min) arts (gei). The Mingei movement, originally an aesthetic movement advocating a return to the simplicity of ancient craftsmanship, gradually became the voice for a holistic approach to the study of the material culture of human societies and gradually established itself as a genuine platform of opposition to the ethnological machine seen as a colonial, reductionist and politically oriented science.

For its part, the association that supported the Mingei movement had, in its daily activities and since the mid-1920s, revived moribund ancient handicraft workshops with increasing economic success, created museums in various places in the archipelago and obtained remarkable recognition for the manufactured products of the common people in the formalist milieu of Japanese arts.

After the Japanese military defeat in 1945, the discourse of Yanagi and his collaborators gained visibility for his sensitive and pacifist approach to the study of human materiality. On the other hand, Japanese academic ethnology, widely criticized for its nationalist political commitment on the colonial terrain, lost its legitimacy. The Mingei movement, which praised the beauty of the folk manufacturing production of Asian populations, skillfully seized a scientific niche left empty by Japanese anthropology and has had a considerable influence on the revival of the ethnology of arts and techniques in Japan.

From Japan to Geneva

Both ethnologically and in terms of a genuine interest in folk ceramics, the rapprochement between the MEG and Japan in 1955 and the resulting exchange of pieces is therefore no coincidence. From the 1920s until his death, Yanagi published extensively a theory of folk arts. This theory, translated into English (Yanagi & Leach 1978) by the potter Bernard Leach (1887-1979) or into Catalan by people close to the circle of the painter Joan Miro (1893-1983), gradually spread throughout Europe. Yanagi's influence is similar in the collecting choices made by Horace van Berchem. Folk art, as Yanagi describes it, responds to specific criteria: functionality, anonymity, solidity, sincerity in particular. It must be alive and still in use, it must be part of a traditional relationship with its production environment and it must respond to human needs, whether religious or secular, that reflect the human nature of the community rather than the individual expression of a single artist. In short, the foundations of the van Berchem ceramic collection summarized in the 1968 book reflect in every respect the theory produced by the Japanese intellectual. The sensitivity to this type of production is also perceptible in Claude Presset's travel diary. Even more than a rare and complete collection of Japanese folk ceramics of the mingei type at the MEG, one finds in the company of Horace van Berchem and his collaborators a similar ambition to approach technical knowledge with a part of humanity that deserves to be underlined in the constitution of the ethnographic collections of the middle of the 20th century.

Bibliography

• KUNIK Damien, 2014, « Yanagi Muneyoshi : Penser aux Coréens » in SOUYRI Pierre, Japon colonial 1880-1930, les voix de la dissension, Paris : Les Belles Lettres.
• PRESSET Claude, 2018, Terres de rencontres, Genève : L’Esprit de la Lettre.
• VAN BERCHEM Horace, 1968, Réhabilitation de la poterie populaire traditionnelle, Genève : Musée et Institut d’Ethnographie.
• YANAGI Muneyoshi & Bernard LEACH, 1978, The Unknown Craftsman : a Japanese Insight into Beauty, Tokyo: Kodansha International