Comment Emballer Cinq Oeufs

This is a beautifully designed book documenting the disappearing art of traditional Japanese packaging.

Balls of rice are individually wrapped in bamboo leaves, handmade sweets in oak leaves, five eggs safely held in woven columns of straw.

There is a gradual shift from the simple materials of wood, bamboo, straw, and clay which subordinate the package’s form to the integral nature of its contents and a faithfulness to the natural materials of which it is made to more superfluous designs.

The intervention of an increasingly capitalist society manifests a visible gap in sympathy between nature and human, product, maker and consumer which serves as a metaphor for the possibilities of relation amongst objects of mass production and consumption and their remorseless waste.

Softcover, fully illustrated, good condition, published in Japan, text in French. 1983