I have always been a huge admirer of Masamichi Katayama, the founder of Tokyo-based Wonderwall studios, and one of the true pioneers of Japanese design. He has a well-earned international reputation for his visionary retail design projects, and if you are not familiar with his work, I would encourage you to check out the Wonderwall website and buy his books. It was a real pleasure when he became one of our clients, as he has impeccable taste and style.
This year, Katayama-san was honoured with a museum exhibition in Tokyo of material from his personal collection of objects (he is a shopaholic), including a selection from his art collection. I was delighted to learn that one of the pieces selected for inclusion in the show was ‘The Thinker’, a colour close up portrait of Paul Weller by Lawrence Watson that Katayama-san acquired when we hosted Lawrence’s Paul Weller exhibition at the gallery. It has always been one of my favourite images of Paul Weller, and is such an innovative and dramatic composition that we used it as the cover image for the exhibition catalogue.
‘The Thinker’ is available to purchase as a limited edition photograph, signed by Lawrence Watson, and you can see it here. Please do check out Lawrence’s other images of Paul Weller here.
You can also commission us to immortalise your favourite Paul Weller record using our Temple of Wax service. We tried it out with a coloured vinyl copy of From the Floorboards Up and the results were pretty special.
