Tajimi has a new place for Tile Addicts to get their fix. No stranger to tile-related celebrations, Kasahara Town’s seasonal festivities, ceramic themed park, and countless pottery shops now welcome a museum among their ranks.
For hundreds of years Tajimi has held a place as Japan’s leading producer of tiles, with Kasahara Town alone housing more than 100 tile factories in the mid-1900s. Eventually modern techniques, international competition, and changes in tastes led to a decline in ornate tile production whilst building demolitions threatened to wipe out the tiles that already existed. But thanks to a few passionate locals many of the traditional pieces were salvaged before they were destroyed, creating the massive archive of unique tiles that now forms the collection of the Mosaic Tile Museum Tajimi.
The unusual building rises in an irregular dome; clay coloured and inlaid with tiles. Architect Terunobu Fujimori’s design captures many elements important to tile production, from the dipped quarry-like shape the building sits in to the celebration of raw earth that decorates the facade. Surrounded by rolling green hills and countoured with pine, the museum’s associations with the earth are unmissable. Within it, the countless ceramic creations make an incredible show of the true magic of mosaics.
A new post by Hanna Simpson, Diary of a Tile Addict, October 2022.