The Yii Brand: Transformative, Aesthetic, Innovative

A cantilever chair called "43" made from 43 slats of bamboo has an elegance that highlights the flexibility and durability of Taiwan's moso bamboo and is helping make a name for Taiwan's Yii brand of handicrafts.

The chair's designer chose bamboo as his material in consideration of geographic and cultural factors. Chen Kao-ming, a lecturer in bamboo product design at TransWorld University who grew up in Nantou County's bamboo-producing Zhushan Township, says that Taiwan's warm, damp climate and strong northeasterly monsoon produce durable, high-quality bamboo. Moreover, bamboo is one of the world's fastest-growing plants and is therefore considered an environmentally friendly material par excellence.

Lee Tsun-jen, a potter for more than 40 years, believes that traditional crafts need to be seasoned with new, more contemporary elements. The technique used to fire the "rice-grain porcelain" (above) creates small holes in the finished piece. A light shone through the finished work creates beautiful patterns on the table.

In an effort to bring Taiwan's best bamboos and bamboo craftsmanship to the world, NTCRDI's first creative director Jeff Shi, international-class designer Konstantin Grcic, and master bamboo artisan Chen Kao-ming joined forces to create the bamboo chair known as 43. While representing contemporary Taiwanese bamboo handicrafts, 43 also echoes the simple, clean design of the steel tubing chairs made in Germany in the 1930s.

The cantilever chair is shaped like a person sitting comfortably. Its structural balance and the strength of the bamboo from which it is made keep it stable in spite of its lack of rear legs. But bamboo, tough as it is, isn't as strong as steel tubing, and 43's original design therefore bound front and back tightly together. But the 2.35 centimeter wide, 0.5 cm thick slats of bamboo, heated and bent into graceful curves, didn't offer enough support. The design was then modified to add space between the front and back slats, increasing support without any loss of flexibility or beauty.

Meanwhile, Kevin Chou, a lecturer at Shih Chien University who has won design awards from Germany's iF and the US's IDEA, and wickerwork artisan Sue Su created the Bambool stool. The stool was one of just 23 pieces (out of thousands on exhibition) to win a Coup de Coeur award at the 2008 Maison & Objet show in Paris. The stool also won a red dot design prize in 2009.

The Bambool has three legs made of bamboo cylinders, which are split and woven together at the top to form the seat using a technique that creates a very naturalistic feel. Su, who spends ten days making each chair, says that while bringing order out of chaos may look easy, it's actually very hard. "It's a bit like a woman putting on makeup. You can't apply too much at one time. You have to work your way up bit by bit or you'll have it too thick in some spots and none at all in others."

Colored glass, motorcycle headlights, wickerwork, driftwood, bricks... Taiwanese designers and artisans are joining hands to forge the new Yii brand, blending distinctively local materials and culture into exquisite handicrafts.

The Yii brand arose out of the Taiwan Fashion Craft program developed by NTCRDI and the Taiwan Design Center (TDC).

Tsai Hsiang, director of NTCRDI, says that the government views handicrafts as one of the six core cultural and creative industries, but believes Taiwanese crafts need to be transformed and upgraded if they are to stay relevant. One way to do so is to pair traditional materials and techniques with ideas from contemporary fashion and design.

The Fashion Craft program brings together master artisans from fields such as woodcarving, wickerwork, pottery, dyeing, and lacquerware with young designers who have exhibited and won awards abroad. These groups first hold in-depth discussions and seek common ground on issues related to the handicrafts industry, handicraft techniques, and design. When the meetings conclude, the designers propose ideas that are discussed and refined until they take a more tangible form.

Finally, the designers put their ideas to an evaluation committee. When the committee approves an idea, the designer then works with an artisan to turn it into an actual product.

Colored glass, motorcycle headlights, wickerwork, driftwood, bricks... Taiwanese designers and artisans are joining hands to forge the new Yii brand, blending distinctively local materials and culture into exquisite handicrafts.

Yii was born in 2008, its name a play on the many potential meanings of the "yi" sound in Chinese. "Yii implies 'transformative,' 'aesthetic,' and 'innovative,'" explains Tsai. He says that the first yi refers to the Yijing, the Book of Changes, and reflects the brand's core idea: transformation. The second yi is that used in the word for the arts and for handicrafts, and shows the brand's respect for natural materials and the work of artisans. The third yi refers to Taiwan's creative design work. The brand brings together designers and artisans, East and West, the traditional and the modern, the natural and the human, in the pursuit of exquisite craft and quality.

Over the last four years, the 26 designers and 33 artisans who have participated in the Fashion Craft program have completed 99 works.

Since 2008, these works have been exhibited at international shows in the US, France, Italy, and Germany, representing Taiwanese crafts and engaging in international dialogue.

Notwithstanding the tremendous ambition of the Fashion Craft program's goals, its development budget is modest, just NT$5 million per year. Each artisan and designer receives an allowance of just NT$40-80,000 for working on a project. Participants' main incentive is the excitement and anticipation they feel at the prospect of "unpredictable results."

"Nobody knows whether their work will produce a success," says Ho Chung-tang, a designer who has worked in the consumer electronics industry for more than a decade. "For designers and artisans, Yii represents a journey into the unknown." Ho says that he was very familiar with aluminum and plastic, but his experience with the artisans in the program has introduced him to new materials and techniques.

Take his 40-cm-tall, 50-cm-diameter, lantern-shaped "Incense," for example. "Burning incense is an ancient part of East Asian life," says Ho. "The act helps create a peaceful and meditative atmosphere. But making incense is as touchy as managing a girlfriend." Ho notes that makers of incense truly are dependent on the heavens for their living. Weather can deform or even break incense during its production. In his efforts to control the length and speed of the incense's burn, he made numerous changes to the traditional shape and manufacturing process before finally arriving at something that looked, smelled and felt different. He says the process was full of both surprises and rewards.

The "Plate Playte" created by Ho and Snake Kiln potter Lin Kuo-long introduces creativity and playfulness into everyday life. Ho says that no matter how pretty the image on an ordinary plate, the dregs of a meal will hide it. In the case of the Plate Playte, the images are dimpled into the surface of the plate, so the leftover sauces and whatnot actually make them more visible. The layering of the image also adds interest to the presentation of the meal itself.

Though designers' knowledge of materials isn't as comprehensive as that of artisans, their lack of inhibition pushes artisans to move beyond their traditional techniques and into new areas.

"You need the techniques of traditional handicrafts to give your creations some heft," says Lee Tsun-jen, a nominee for the National Crafts Award who has been making pottery for 40 years. Lee says that pottery has overcome most of its technical challenges. Nowadays, virtually the entire pottery community is familiar with the once-secret techniques for producing "Lang Yao red," celadon, and Ru ware, and has reached the point where it urgently needs to incorporate more modern elements. "But you have to do it in a measured fashion. It's like seasoning food. You can't add too much at once."

Makino bamboo is heated and bent to create a curvaceous recliner that retains burn marks from the heat used to shape it. The chair is the result of cooperation between an international designer and a Taiwanese artisan.

While designers are "playing" with crafts, the creative director is keeping a necessary hand on the tiller.

When the Craft Fashion program got underway, it did so with Dragonfly founder Jeff Shi at its helm as creative director. Traveling Taiwan talking to artisans about their trades, Shi found himself particularly drawn to bamboo, which he regards as a "uniquely East Asian material." Designers East and West are desperately seeking new materials, and bamboo offers Taiwanese designers a culturally charged material with which to distinguish themselves on the global stage. At Shi's urging, Taiwan introduced the 43 chair and other works created by domestic artisans to the international design community.

Lin Jeng-yi, a former director of -NTCRDI, says that given Yii's focus on the US and European markets, its aesthetics cannot be completely Taiwanese. The institute hired Gijs Bakker, founder of the noted Dutch design house Droog, as creative director in 2009 with an eye to getting on track with international design and helping the brand establish itself.

Established in 1993, Droog employs more than 100 designers from around the world, and emphasizes a clean, natural aesthetic. The company's most iconic piece is perhaps the lamp it crafted from hanging milk bottles. By building the lamp from a recycled material, Droog was able to merge the concepts of simplicity and progress in a single object.

Applying the insights of a creative director with an international perspective to the work of domestic designers can be enlightening.

Take, for example, the Bambool stool that garnered so much notice at the 2008 Maison & Objets show. Designer Kevin Chou says that the first generation of the stool had a flat seat and lacked all of the ergonomic features and curves of later versions. By incorporating the creative director's recommendations, he made the stool both more visually appealing and more comfortable.

But designers and creative directors don't always have a firm grasp of the limits of traditional materials and handcrafting, which sometimes results in failed designs.

Ho had an idea for clothing "that makes fat people look thin." His original plan called for using a blue dye on the waist and sleeves to create a graduated effect. It was only after several attempts that he recognized the limits of hand dyeing. Unable to create the effect he was looking for, he had to abandon the idea.

But most of the time designers are amazed by what artisans can achieve. It took two months to build the 43. Bamboo had to be selected, treated to preserve it and prevent termites, and air dried. It was then cut into uniform slats, heated and bent. Slats for front and back were grouped, reheated, and rebent, then joined. Finally, the whole piece was sanded and painted. To highlight the piece's dynamism and lines, the 18 front and back slats and the seven horizontal slats had to fit together snugly in a 3D arrangement. "This is the first time bamboo has challenged the third dimension," says Chen.

Colored glass, motorcycle headlights, wickerwork, driftwood, bricks... Taiwanese designers and artisans are joining hands to forge the new Yii brand, blending distinctively local materials and culture into exquisite handicrafts.

Yii's couple years of exposure at important international shows have earned it numerous accolades. The world's largest design portal, Core77, the world's largest design-related online magazine, designboom, and many international design magazines have published features on it. Designers, museums, galleries, importers, and individual buyers have all expressed interest in working with Yii, and in some cases, have placed orders on the spot.

NTCRDI estimates that inquiries at the 2010 Maison & Objet show in Paris, which marked the brand's first attempt to price its products, amounted to nearly NT$100 million. Orders at the February 2011 show in Frankfurt amounted to 55,600, while orders under negotiation amounted to roughly 840,000, or nearly 900,000 in total (roughly NT$36 million).

But now that Yii has the orders in hand, they've run into a roadblock: the artisans can't begin production because the intellectual property rights to most of the pieces are jointly held by NTCRDI, the designers, and the artisans, and NTCRDI has yet to find a marketing firm to represent it.

Lin says that Yii set out to establish itself as an elite international brand and originally planned to spend five years building and raising the profile of the brand. But NTCRDI has insisted that production and marketing both be handled from Taiwan. Unfortunately, Taiwan's marketing firms lack international marketing experience. As a result, Yii has established a name for itself, but is having real difficulty figuring out how to profit from it.

Tsai Hsiang, NTCRDI's director, says that the Yii brand encompasses a tremendous variety of works. NTCRDI has twice attempted to recruit a marketing partner, but has yet to find a suitable firm. As a result, it cannot license the products for sale. NTCRDI expects to amend the rights to the brand and the products as well as its marketing plan to allow different marketing strategies for different types of products. Product categories will include high-priced goods, limited-edition goods, and artworks to be distributed through museums or art auctions.

NTCRDI is now planning to let designers and artisans develop their own "subsidiary brands" under Yii's guidance.

Though the designers and artisans have yet to profit from the production and sale of their work, intangible "value added" abounds.

Gina Hsu, a designer who created her DHH Studio by repurposing her father's old hospital equipment, believes that while Taiwan's design capabilities have exploded in recent years, local designers have yet to establish unique and distinctive identities. She sees Yii as a means to pair designers who have ideas but not the knowledge to implement them with artisans who know their materials "too well," to create a win-win situation.

By dialoging and completing projects together, designers and artisans are raising their profiles and enhancing their reputations, which may indirectly spur greater cooperation among Taiwanese firms.

"I didn't expect the flame to burn so brightly," says Chen Kao-ming, adding that he believes the injection of a bit of contemporary feeling into traditional bamboo wickerwork has brought the latter back from the brink of extinction.

Perhaps people in this day and age are too impatient, providing brands with too little time to develop. But most of us are still hoping that Yii will succeed and provide a roadmap for the transformation of Taiwanese handicrafts.

Working in her own DHH Studio, Gina Hsu challenges herself with different materials seeking to produce even more innovative pieces.

Colored glass, motorcycle headlights, wickerwork, driftwood, bricks... Taiwanese designers and artisans are joining hands to forge the new Yii brand, blending distinctively local materials and culture into exquisite handicrafts.

The National Taiwan Craft Research and Development Institute introduces cutting-edge designers to traditional materials. This bamboo lamp and the Plate Playte are among designer Ho Chung-tang's most notable works.

Colored glass, motorcycle headlights, wickerwork, driftwood, bricks... Taiwanese designers and artisans are joining hands to forge the new Yii brand, blending distinctively local materials and culture into exquisite handicrafts.

Imagination can soar beyond the clouds, but design has to remain grounded in life. The photo shows some of Kevin Chou's design sketches

The technique wickerwork artisan Sue Su utilized to make the seat has a naturalistic look, but is highly ordered. It takes a tremendous amount of experience to achieve the right fiber density.

Colored glass, motorcycle headlights, wickerwork, driftwood, bricks... Taiwanese designers and artisans are joining hands to forge the new Yii brand, blending distinctively local materials and culture into exquisite handicrafts.

Lee Tsun-jen, a potter for more than 40 years, believes that traditional crafts need to be seasoned with new, more contemporary elements. The technique used to fire the "rice-grain porcelain" (above) creates small holes in the finished piece. A light shone through the finished work creates beautiful patterns on the table.

The National Taiwan Craft Research and Development Institute introduces cutting-edge designers to traditional materials. This bamboo lamp and the Plate Playte are among designer Ho Chung-tang's most notable works.

The striking Bambool stool.