It has become an anthropological truism to say that it is possible to write the 'biography of an object', to track its life from creation through the different stages of its ownership, its patterns of use and its progress into old age. It is a useful way of thinking about the 'status' of an object and how that manifests itself through time: how the meanings of an object change in its encounters with people. The biography of one group of Japanese objects, known variously in the West as Mingei, Japanese folk craft, Japanese folk art or indeed Japanese art, would be spectacularly complex. Imagine the layerings of the narrative, the twists and turns and uncertainties of our putative object's life through its birth in the deep cultural matrix of Japanese craft to the web of artistic, economic, social and religious aspirations that cause it to be made.
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