Yanagi, Sori

Sori Yanagi (also known as Yanagi Muneyoshi) was a Japanese designer. He was the son of Yanagi Sōetsu, a philosopher and founder of the mingei (‘folk craft’) movement in Japan in the late 1920s and 1930s. Yanagi studied architecture and art at the Tokyo Academy of Fine Art and worked with Charlotte Perriand in the early 1940s, during her stay in Tokyo. After winning both the 1st and 2nd place in the first Japan Industrial Design Contest in 1952, he was able to start his own design studio. Yanagi designed a wide array of objects; from furniture to cars, subway stations and the torch for the 1972 Sapporo Winter Olympics.