Reviving Craft: Reflection of the Mind
About the event
Featuring more than 60 artists, a landmark exhibition that traces China’s living craft heritage, exploring objects of art and design as mirrors of the mind. Across stoneware, ceramics, glass, jewellery, textiles, and furniture, Reviving Craft: Reflection of the Mind explores what craft means – culturally, philosophically and materially. It traces China's living craft heritage, not as a preserved artefact but as an ongoing conversation between traditional and contemporary design. Digital and immersive elements run throughout, bringing heritage techniques into the present through modern technology and imagination. Rooted in Eastern thought, it draws on Confucianism, Buddhism, and Daoism to argue that objects reflect the mind: not just made but thought into being, carrying the inner life of their maker. Reviving Craft: Reflection of the Mind offers a different way of looking, one that challenges assumptions about the relationship between maker, object, and viewer. Structured around three inward states – Chengxin (clearing the mind), Xiuxin (refining the mind), and Yangxin (nourishing the mind) – the exhibition suggests that craft is neither a relic of the past nor a luxury of the present, but a living, evolving practice. Reviving Craft is an Official Special Project Partner of London Design Festival 2026.
