Designer Noriko Daishima runs a small shop, café and creative studio in her home in Shanghai. Located in the French Concession, on Xingguo Lu, she calls her place Le Petit Xiaoxiao (small, small, small) and keeps it open for friends and their friends during the weekends. Last Saturday, we visited Noriko for a chat and green tea.
Noriko in her home and Le Petit Xiaoxiao café and shop.
Originally from Tokyo, Noriko, 42, has lived in Shanghai for 7 years. She first visited the city through her work for Muji, where she designed interior products and dealt with many Chinese manufacturers. “I have always been interested in production,” Noriko tells us. “The Shanghai area is special as there are many small factories here. I came to China because I wanted to learn the language and get to know the local producers and their thoughts.”
“I came to China because I wanted to learn the language and get to know the local producers and their thoughts.”
Noriko explains that she felt as if she was going back to her own roots when she moved from Japan to China. “Many cultural traditions in Japan actually come from here,” she notes. “I was also intrigued by the fact that Shanghai was so chaotic, so unfinished, and much more aggressive than Tokyo. You know, life easily gets shallow if everything is just beautiful. Here, it’s harder, but more interesting. However, Shanghai is starting to get more organised now, and people are getting more gentle. The city is developing, and maybe becoming less exciting than before, too.”
Noriko’s house is small and white. Built in 1948, it consists of two rooms – a bedroom and a living room where we sit drinking tea from cups hand-made by the host herself. The same cups are sold in Noriko’s home shop: a shelf of items from pottery to woodwork and textiles, most of which are designed by her and made by Chinese artisans – just like almost all the furniture in her house, too. Moreover, the shop selection includes some traditional Chinese everyday objects Noriko has found in random street shops around the city – beautiful and practical things that are often underestimated, and thus hard to find, in the globalising city.
Le Petit Xiaoxiao features ceramics crafted by Noriko and other products designed by her and made by local artisans.
“I’m very interested in primitive design and production methods,” Noriko explains her interest towards Chinese crafts. “In my own work, I try to combine traditional methods with new design.” One of her projects, factory-tshirt.net, sets out to create an online platform for designers and manufacturers to collaborate and learn about different design and production methods through the medium of a classic white t-shirt. On the website, Noriko presents her own T-shirt project involving indigo dying in a farmhouse in Zhoucheng, Yunnan and printing with plaster and soya in Tongxiang, Zhejiang. “It’s nice to know about things,” Noriko says.
The garden in front of Noriko's place is taken care of by her together with her neighbours.
In addition to more traditional crafts, Noriko is also interested in web design and programming. “I don’t like to distinguish between different fields of creative work – people are more complex than that,” she notes. Working at home and for herself, she also likes to experiment with the boundaries between labour and leisure. “I hate the office,” she says. “It’s the most uncreative place in the world.”
“I hate the office. It’s the most uncreative place in the world.”
Like us, many people found their way to Noriko’s through a friend’s recommendation. We heard about the place from Satoko and Kok-Meng, a Shanghai-based couple who met each other at Le Petit Xiaoxiao and later founded KUU design office together. “I wanted to create a small creative community by making my home a meeting place,” Noriko tells us about her activities resonating Chinese communality. “I have made many new friends at my place.”