Archive treasures: a 1930 book with the mathematical patterns of the Japanese Mizuki Heitaro

At the beginning of the 20th century, Japanese schools of arts and crafts began to breathe a different atmosphere. Thanks to the ever-increasing relations with the West, the influence of European artistic movements arrived in the classrooms: thanks to teachers who had had the opportunity to travel to the Old Continent, and to the books that began to be imported from outside, students had the their first contacts with Art Nouveau, Art Déco, the Viennese Secession, Arts and Crafts.
It was the same for Mizuki Heitarowho graduated in 1908 from the Kyōto Craft High School (which in 1949 merged with the Kyōto Sericulture Training School to create today’s Kyōto Institute of Technology) and had, among his teachers, Tadashi Asai, a painter who preferred the style Western, and Goichi Takeda, an architect who had studied in Europe and, when he returned home, introduced to Japan the styles he had encountered in his years abroad.
Three years after graduating, Mizuki found a job at the same school where he trained, later becoming an assistant professor. He remained there until 1920, before being hired by Marubeni, a company which today is a multinational with thousands of employees active in many sectors, but which at the time was involved in the trade of fabrics.

At Marubeni, Mizuki began as a design consultant at the Osaka branch, in a company phase in which, alongside trade, the design and production of fabrics was also carried out, mainly for kimonos then sold in department stores Japanese. In 1930, promoted to head of design development, Mizuki Heitaro was, together with his colleague Fukunishi Hirosato, the contact link between the company and the many artists who collaborated with it, some of whom he had already known during his time at the Kyōto Craft High School .
It was precisely in 1930 – nine years before his death – that Mizuki published his little masterpiece.

Titled Abstract pattern portfoliowas inspired by Kaléidoscope: Ornements Abstraitsa collection of Art Deco ornaments signed by Maurice Pillard Verneuil (himself influenced by Japanese art) in 1926.
Mizuki, however, did not slavishly imitate the style of the French decorator and illustrator. Instead he found his own path, focusing on abstract geometries (combinations of squares, triangles, rectangles and circles) and on color combinations made of contrasts and extensive use of complementaries, but building the drawings starting from mathematical relationships and equations.
The result is something very far from the Japanese artistic and artisanal production of the time: a collection of ultra-contemporary patterns that resemble what is possible today with some software to create generative art compositions.

The book, which is part of the collection of the Rhode Island School of Design, can be download for free herewhile the individual tables can be admired, and downloaded, on the platform Artvee.