oceanoby Yota Abe

To a familiar form, one thing only

The work of Yota Abe begins from a single notion: "the form with one thing." Take a shape one sees often, and add just "one" element to it. A technique or an idea that serves as a point of departure; a wish to make something a certain way; a request from the user who carries the thing about, day after day. From among all of these, one is chosen and dissolved into the whole without strain. A form that ought to have been ordinary begins to hold a character of its own, and becomes something that gives pleasure to the hand that holds it. It is a quiet way of thinking, held well in check. Harder than adding is the leaving unadded.

Born in Saitama in 1988. He studied product design in the Department of Production Design at Tama Art University. Rather than entering a workshop after graduating, he left for Mexico, and there took up leatherwork. He crossed South America from end to end, selling what he made along the way. Back in Japan, he learned the making of bags over again at two leather bag manufacturers in Tokyo. In 2019 he founded oceano, and since 2022 he has worked from a base in Fuji, Shizuoka. The design classroom, the long journey, the workbench of the workshop: these three educations appear, undisguised, in the products themselves.

The pieces of oceano are made entirely by hand, so that the leather itself may speak for as much as possible. The material is vegetable-tanned oil leather. As it is dye-finished, with no lacquer or other protective coating, the surface is covered by nothing at all. Being natural hide, it may carry scars and unevenness of colour; Abe asks that these be received not as flaws but as the leather's expression. Leather rich in oil asks almost nothing in the way of care. Dust is wiped away with a cloth, and the seams and folded details are seen to with a brush. After that, use it. As it is taken up day by day, the lustre grows and the colour deepens.

Everything in this work leads to that same place. To a familiar form, one intended change. A material left with room to go on changing. And a tool that is finished not in the workshop, but in the hands of the one who owns it.