teapot by jürgen lehl

babaghuri provides handmade crafts to treasure.  in the babaghuri shop (3-1-7 kiyosumi, kyoto-ku), during tokyo designers week, german-born and tokyo based fashion designer jürgen lehl presented his line of iron kettles and ceramics made in the rounded natural shapes of coconuts, mangos, or eggplants. some are handmade by jürgen lehl himself (in okinawa), others are made by local artists (here in alphabetical order – masanobu ando, tsunehisa gunji, kazunori hori, takashi ichikawa, kan itoh, daisuke kameda, asou kojima, hiroshi konnukaga, ohmine-studio, ruriko shima, toshiki sugimoto, masashi tsunokake, tadamasa yamamoto). the here featured objects are all created by jürgen lehl himself.

jurgen lehl: babaghuri teapot by jürgen lehl image © designboom

jurgen lehl: babaghuri teapot by jürgen lehl image © designboom

jurgen lehl: babaghuri teapot by jürgen lehl image © designboom

jurgen lehl: babaghuri teapot by jürgen lehl image © designboom

jurgen lehl: babaghuri teapot by jürgen lehl image © designboom

jurgen lehl: babaghuri teapot by jürgen lehl image © designboom

jurgen lehl: babaghuri teapot by jürgen lehl image © designboom

jurgen lehl: babaghuri teapot by jürgen lehl image © designboom

jurgen lehl: babaghuri jurgen lehl portrait © designboom

jürgen lehl represents a cultural amalgam that is reflected in his design philosophy. born of german nationality, he has lived in japan since 1971. he founded his textile design company, jürgen lehl co. ltd., in 1972, producing a ready-to-wear line of clothing in 1974. multi-layered and elaborate in its simplicity, the kimono represents the basis of all japanese fashion thinking. lehl’s clothing married eastern and western fashion. a man’s jacket in black wool from 1986 combined the notion of western tailoring with the band neckline  of a kimono jacket. his radical minimalism is reflected with a single button that fastens the jacket, with a simplistic  buttonhole created logically between the band and the body of the jacket. lehl is intellectually reductive in his approach to design, reexamining and reducing details to produce unpretentious  simplicity. lehl’s creations are popular in japan and are sold there in over 40 boutiques. his garments are always made of natural materials – cotton, linen, silk, and wool – and he uses the traditional japanese dyeing techniques of ikat and shibori. when a major assessment is made of the influence of japanese designers on contemporary fashion, it should be remembered that the east-to-west design passage is not all one way. lehl represents the rare phenomenon of a western designer working in the east.