Best Things: Ray Komai

Instagram and Pinterest are wonderful sources of treasures, best enjoyed when I go beyond a simple ‘like’ or ‘pin it’, and take the time to explore a  little.

This morning, thanks to @modernform on Instagram, I spotted this intriguing image of a design by Ray Komai – a name I’d never heard before.

Some Googling told me that Ray Komai was born and educated in Los Angeles, working as a graphic artist, and after WWII, when he’d been interned in a Japanese camp, he moved to New York, and opened his own design studio. Here, he created his ‘Masks’ design for Laverne Originals in 1948, clearly inspired by the primitivism in art of people like Klee and Picasso.

I could not find a lot more about Ray Komai online, but he is certainly best known for his molded walnut plywood Komai Side Chair (which, curiously enough, also has the appearance of a mask).

Thanks, @modernform, for sending me down the Ray Komai rabbit hole today!