ART / EXHIBITIONS

Ryuichi Okuno

Ryuichi Okuno is a Chiba-based textile dealer whose practice centers on the curation and spatial direction of Japanese traditional textiles and folk tools.

He operates Studio Waraya, a 180-year-old thatched farmhouse he personally renovated into a studio and showroom, where he sells and preserves vintage Japanese textiles for audiences both in Japan and abroad.

In parallel, he co-runs Sora to Umi, a welfare-based craft community founded by his father, where about eighty members with disabilities engage in various forms of making across multiple studios.

Okuno’s work reinterprets the traditional techniques of reuse and repair that were once part of everyday life in Japan, introducing them as living practices in the present. His projects seek to record the quiet intelligence inherent in rural craft—the ways in which tools, fibers, and hands have inscribed the memory of daily life.

Guided by the Japanese ethos of mottainai—a spirit of care, humility, and reverence for continuity—he approaches acts of preservation and repair as artistic expressions in themselves.

Ryuichi Okuno

Waraya
Sora to Umi

https://www.oldindustrialjapan.com
https://www.jizokai.com

*All works will be on display and for sale.
*Payment is by credit card only.
*Purchases will be mailed after the exhibition.

81 Exhibition: Ouroboros | Past and Future in Simultaneous Dialogue, 2025

81 TOKYO