Text provided by designer.
Relations between Mingei, Japanese Folk Art movements, and English Arts and Crafts have been discussed extensively. Although William Morris’s influence on Yanagi’s theory is obvious in its criticism of wage labour relations and for-profit mass production, the Japanese movement insisted on distancing itself from western influences to promoted a unique local identity. Modernist critics argued that Mingei was a sort of reversed orientalism with a romanticized take on traditional means of production. But it is also clear that Japanese Folk Art had, in return, a tremendous influence on modernist designers such as Charlotte Perriand. Both movements were born in times of rapid industrialisation and were used to promote tragic nationalism. How could they translate to a time of globalised capitalism where the uncredited and stateless visuals on our Instagram feeds have become our cultural identity?
Taking a contemporary stand on a long-lasting regional tradition, Goodbye Horses is a local pub in a residential neighbourhood of a multicultural metropolis. Ambiguous reflections on local crafts, natural materials, cultural heritage and cross-cultural influences are at the core of the project development.
The ten metre-long timber bar, unconventionally low, is the central element of the space and acts as a counter, a kitchen bench, a dining table. Somehow inspired by rustic and vernacular joinery, the bar and surrounding custom made furniture are entirely built out of one single large oak tree. Each part of the trunk is carefully used, revealing the veins, the bark and the cracks of this century-old giant. The bespoke stools and lights are created with the same solid oak combined with Japanese hemp fiber paper, hand casted Italian glass, volcanic stone and oxidised brass. Italian grotesque and Japanese wabi-sabi casually meet English medieval revival in an eclectic mixture of assumed cultural references.
The surfaces of the old brick building are lined using local know-how. While the existing walls are painted with limewash and old-fashion roughcast, the ceiling is covered by a hand-textured lime plaster. The beaten earth floor, commonly used in the early days of countryside pubs, is made of a mix of soil, straw and clay with a natural linseed oil coating. Reclaimed Yorkstone slabs are used in the garden and floor area with heavy traffic.
Artist Lucy Stein hand-painted the large hessian curtains embracing the space. Inspired by British folklore and mythology, the natural stain on the fabric filters the light entering the pub as stained glass windows in the past. Her evocative and radically contemporary motifs might best express the contradicting but fascinating relation between globalised issues and the local discourse praised by Morris two centuries ago.
