4 七彩での仕事
毛利はマネキン制作会社の七彩工芸（現・七彩）に長く勤めた人でもありました。
七彩工芸は島津製作所二代目社長・島津源蔵の長男である島津良蔵（1901-1970）と、彫刻家の向井良吉（1918-2010）が中心となって1946年に発足。島津と向井は京都出身ですが、毛利と同じ東京美術学校（現・東京藝術大学）彫刻科で学び、前身となる島津製作所マネキン部でマネキン製造販売に関わった面々でした。
実家が戦火で焼失していたため、復員後は家族とともに知人宅に身を寄せざるを得なかった毛利は、京都で一年ほど木彫の修復や模刻に従事したのち、七彩工芸に参加したようです。「彫刻科を卒業して彫刻を続けていくためには（中略）学校の美術の教師になるか、あるいはマネキン会社に勤めるかが主な道だった*1」と1957年七彩工芸入社の欠田誠が述べたように、戦後、彫刻を諦めず生計を立てていく道として毛利が先輩の経営するマネキン会社に勤め始めたことは自然な流れにも思えます。
向井によると、島津は芸術家が世の中に関わっていく使命感のもと金儲けの手段でなく芸術家の社会運動としてマネキン制作を行った人でした。島津の若い芸術家を育てるパトロンとしての思いが強かったことや、社員の多くが美術学校の先輩・後輩・同窓生同士だったこともあり、会社にはサロン的でアットホームな雰囲気があったと言います。そこには制作の側で飲み食いを共にしたり、議論を戦わせたり、クラシック音楽や楽器の演奏に触れたり、海外の雑誌を訳してデザインの勉強会をしたりなど、世代や専門分野を超えた若い作り手たちの活発な交流と自由かつ総合的な創造・思考の場がありました。未熟でも独創的で新しい提案に対しては高い評価を与える気風が、七彩にはあったと欠田は回想しています。
紙や胡粉を使ったファイバー製マネキンに代わり、ポリエステル樹脂製のマネキンが完成した1950年代後半から60年代の初めにかけては特に、岡本太郎、東郷青児、堀内正和、八木一夫、鈴木治、そしてフランスから招聘したジャン・ピエール・ダルナなど、彫刻家だけでなく画家や陶芸家など多くの芸術家が七彩工芸のマネキン制作に関わりました。毛利を含む40余の七彩工芸内外の作家が参加した “彫刻家が形を作ってそこに画家が絵付けをする” という実験的な陶芸作品群を制作・発表する「火の藝術の会」の開催も1959年のことでした。
七彩工芸ではマネキン制作に止まらず什器やディスプレイなど総合的な商空間制作も行うようになったため、ポリエステルやアルギン酸など新しい素材や技術も入りやすく、それに触れやすい環境がありました。七彩工芸は “彫刻” や “生活の糧” だけでなく創作と思考の場、新素材との出会い、世代や分野を超えた交流や協働といった機会を毛利に与え、またそういう志向を彼の内に育んだと言えるかもしれません。
文：メイボン尚子
*1 欠田誠『マネキン 美しい人体の物語』晶文社、2002年
参考
藤井秀雪 x 柳原正樹「記念対談『七彩を語る』」『CROSS SECTIONS』Vol.9、京都国立近代美術館、2019年
株式会社七彩戦略企画室担当者（渡邉啓史氏、池田公信氏）ならびに藤井秀雪氏への聞き取り、2024年5月
藤井秀雪「マネキンの歴史」『夜想』第31号、1993年
向井良吉「マネキンのヒューマニティを求めて」『夜想』第31号、1993年
欠田誠『マネキン 美しい人体の物語』晶文社、2002年
柳原正樹「七彩に集った作家たち」『CROSS SECTIONS』Vol.9、京都国立近代美術館、2019年
4 Working at Nanasai
Mohri was also a long-time employee of Nanasai Kōgei (present day Nanasai), a mannequin production company.
Nanasai Kōgei (hereafter Nanasai) was established in 1946 by Ryōzō Shimazu (1901-1970), the eldest son of Genzō Shimazu, the second president of Shimadzu Corporation, and the sculptor Ryōkichi Mukai (1918-2010). Shimazu and Mukai were both from Kyoto, but like Mohri, they also studied at the sculpture department of the Tokyo School of Fine Arts (present day Tokyo University of the Arts). Both Shimazu and Mukai were involved in the production and sale of mannequins at the mannequin department of Shimadzu Corporation, the predecessor of Nanasai.
After demobilisation, Mohri, whose family home had been burnt down by war, was forced to take refuge with his family at a friend of the family’s house. It seems that, after spending about a year in Kyoto restoring wooden sculptures and producing copies of Buddhist statues, Mohri joined Nanasai. As Makoto Kakeda, who joined Nanasai in 1957, said, “after graduating from the sculpture department of an art school, the main options for continuing to make sculptures were to become a school art teacher or to work for a mannequin company*1”. It feels like a natural choice for Mohri to start working for a mannequin company run by a senior in the sculpture department at the same school after the war, as a way of making a living without giving up on sculpture.
According to Mukai, Shimazu was a man who made mannequins not as a way to make money, but as a social movement of artists, with a sense of mission to get artists involved in society. Shimazu had a strong desire to be a patron to nurture young artists, and many of the employees were former students of art schools. These qualities made the company enjoy a salon-like, homely atmosphere. There was a space for lively exchange of ideas and free and comprehensive creation and thinking: young creators from different generations and fields could come together to eat and drink, debate, listen to classical music and play musical instruments, and hold design workshops through translating foreign magazines. Nanasai had a culture of giving high praise to original and new proposals, even though the ideas might have been unrefined, Kakeda recalls,
Especially from the late 1950s to early 1960s, when polyester resin-based mannequins arrived to replace the paper and gohun (white pigment made with powdered calcium carbonate)-based mannequins, many artists, including sculptors, painters and ceramicists, got involved in the production of Nanasai mannequins, such as Tarō Okamoto, Seiji Tōgō, Masakazu Horiuchi , Kazuo Yagi, Osamu Suzuki, as well as Jean-Pierre Darnat who was invited from France. It was 1959 too, when Hi no geijutsu no kai (Association for the Art of Fire) was formed with over 40 artists from or outside Nanasai, including Mohri, for producing and presenting an experimental group of ceramic works, in which sculptors created the shapes and painters added the decoration.
As Nanasai Kōgei began to produce not only mannequins but also a comprehensive range of commercial spaces, including fixtures and displays, it must have made Nanasai an easier environment in which to come into contact with new materials and technologies, such as polyester and alginic acid. It is safe to say that Nanasai gave Mohri not only opportunities to keep working on sculptures and earn a living, but also to think creatively, encounter new materials, and exchange and collaborate with people from different generations and fields, and it fostered these inclinations within him.
Text by Naoko Mabon
*1 Makoto Kakeda, Mannequin: The Story of the Beautiful Human Body, Shōbunsha, 2002.
Reference:
– Interview with representatives from Nanasai Co., Ltd. (Keiji Watanabe and Masanobu Ikeda) and Hideyuki Fujii, May 2024.
– Hideyuki Fujii, “The History of Mannequins,” Yasō magazine, no. 31, 1993.
– Ryōkichi Mukai, “In Search of the Humanity of Mannequins,” Yasō magazine, no. 31, 1993.
– Makoto Kakeda, Mannequin: The Story of the Beautiful Human Body, Shōbunsha, 2002.
– Masaki Yanagihara, “Artists around Mannequin Factory Nanasai,” CROSS SECTIONS, vol. 9, The National Museum of Modern Art, Kyoto, 2019.
– Hideyuki Fujii and Masaki Yanagihara, “In Conversation: Talking about Nanasai,” CROSS SECTIONS, vol. 9, The National Museum of Modern Art, Kyoto, 2019.
Image captions:
– Junior mannequin (1960) for which Mohri created the prototype. From Display D’aujourd’hui, No. 11, 1960, edited and published by Nanasai Kōgei. Image courtesy of Nanasai Co., Ltd.
– Mannequin (1955) for which Mohri created the prototype. From Nanasai 70 Year History, 2016, edited and published by Nanasai Co., Ltd. Image courtesy of Nanasai Co., Ltd.
– The “Hi no geijutsu no kai (Association for the Art of Fire)” at work in Kamakurayama, Kanagawa Prefecture, 1958. Image courtesy of Nanasai Co., Ltd.
– The “Hi no geijutsu no kai (Association for the Art of Fire)” pamphlet, 1959. The image on the cover is Mohri’s work, Magatama (1959). Image courtesy of Nanasai Co., Ltd.
– The new building of Nanasai Kōgei in Kyoto, finished in 1968. The new company emblem, which was created by the marketing department under Mohri’s direction to coincide with the opening of the new building, is displayed on the wall. According to Hideyuki Fujii, who was involved in the creation of the new emblem, it was based on a “human print”, like the fish printing technique called gyotaku, of a female model’s body. Image courtesy of Nanasai Co., Ltd.