Alex Kerr

Author, Cultural Preservationist and Founder, ORIGIN Asia

Industry : The Arts

For more than three decades, Alex Kerr has worked at the point where cultural preservation meets contemporary life. An author, cultural preservationist and founder of ORIGIN Asia, he moves between Japan and Bangkok, championing traditional arts while ensuring that the skills behind them remain relevant and usable.

Originally from the United States, Kerr studied Japanese at Yale University and Chinese Studies at Oxford University. His books include Lost Japan, Dogs and Demons and Another Bangkok, works that examine the often uneasy relationship between heritage, culture and modernity.

In Thailand, that thinking becomes practical. Through ORIGIN Asia, Kerr runs programmes in Bangkok and Chiang Mai that bring participants into direct contact with master artisans and traditional Thai arts and crafts. His Bangkok studio takes the exchange further, specialising in the restoration and mounting of Japanese paintings and calligraphy while training Thai craftspeople in traditional Japanese techniques using authentic materials.

Yet preservation, in Kerr’s hands, is not about freezing culture in time. Alongside his work with Japanese art, he supports Thai craftsmanship and contemporary design, encouraging a deeper appreciation of Thailand’s artistic inheritance. Through education, restoration and cross-cultural exchange, Kerr helps keep knowledge moving between generations – and between Thailand and Japan. His career makes a persuasive case for heritage as something living: respected, practised and still capable of evolution.