Six centuries-old craft traditions from Japan's Tokai region are getting a contemporary reboot at the V&A in South Kensington, as part of London Design Festival 2026. The Craft x Tech Tokai Project pairs artisans from Aichi, Gifu, Mie and Shizuoka prefectures with international designers, and the results — ceramics, paper, enamel, textiles and braided cord reimagined as furniture and lighting — go on show from 12 to 30 September 2026. Entry is free.
The project was founded by Dr Hideki Yoshimoto of design studio Tangent, who wanted to test what happens when knowledge built up over hundreds of years meets minds that have never encountered it. Tokai makes sense as the testing ground: the region's rivers, clay deposits and historic trade routes nurtured both traditional making and industrial innovation side by side.
The six collaborations each pair one maker with one designer. Australian industrial designer David Caon worked with Yohei Ito of Fudogama on Mino Yaki ceramics, producing a console and lighting piece from modular ceramic elements left to the whims of an unpredictable Oribe glaze. Eugene Kangawa and Mayuki Kato of Shingama explored the deep indigos of Seto Sometsuke porcelain, running kiln tests the workshop had never attempted before.
British-Canadian designer Philippe Malouin teamed up with Shigeyuki Ando of Ando Cloisonne on Owari Shippo enamelware, designing stacked boxes sized to the kiln's limits, with casual felt-marker doodles translated into silver wire and black enamel. Lanzavecchia + Wai worked with Takanori Senda of Warabi Paper Company to treat Mino Washi — the paper of shoji screens — as a structural material that holds light, bending the traditional grid as if disturbed by rain.
Bethan Laura Wood partnered with Hiroyuki Murase of Suzusan on Arimatsu Narumi Shibori textiles, developing dyed colours that shift dramatically under illumination — a soft pastel pink that turns near-neon when lit. And South African designer Atang Tshikare joined Tomoyuki Matsuda of Itogo to turn Iga Kumihimo braided cords into sculptural lighting, drawing a line between Japanese braiding and African hair-braiding traditions.
Several of the designers mention the same surprise: the makers they met in Tokai were young and energetic, not the elderly guardians of tradition many expect. That's arguably the most useful takeaway for travellers — the region's craft workshops are living businesses, not museums, and many welcome visitors. If the show inspires a trip, the Tokai region sits between Tokyo and Kyoto on the shinkansen line, with Nagoya as the main hub. Seto and Mino are renowned pottery towns, Arimatsu is a preserved post town famous for shibori dyeing, and Ise-Shima in Mie adds coastline and shrines to the mix.
You'll find the exhibition in the Medieval & Renaissance galleries, Room 64b, at the Simon Sainsbury Gallery at V&A South Kensington — an easy add-on to any London trip in the second half of September, when the festival spreads across the city.