杣耕社のジョンです。
この度は鳥取県の創伸様に呼んで頂いて古材と新材を合わせて門を作る仕事をさせてもらっています！
この「貝の口」と言う継手は全解体じゃないとなかなか出来なくてやる機会が少ないなんですが継手の新材と古材の当たる面積が多くて摩擦と両先端に目地を作る事で全方向に非常に強い継手です。
どうにかこの素敵な材料や年月の味を生かせると良いと思っています。
日々是好日
Happy New Year, 2020! /
Last year ended with the final inspection of a new home / bakery in the nearby town of Kurashiki, Japan. It was a whirlwind to finish making every effort to build our first home/store from the ground up in less than 9 months. After the final inspection and the removal of all of the protective coverings for the various pieces that make up this beautiful new building made from wood, stone, soil, glass, and ceramic tile, it was as usual stunning to enter the quiet humble space. The smell of natural materials, the play of light on the hewn beams, the peaceful quiet of the empty space embraced by natural earthen plaster!
Taking a few days off and going back to my wife’s hometown of Kyoto to be with her family and my sweet little 9 month old son was breathtakingly refreshing and gave me time to reflect on the new year. What emerged was the question of what we can do to help a world that is increasingly divided, ripe with conflict, and struggling to find a way to move forward in a modern society that has yet to perceive that our world is on fire, literally and figuratively now.
Day to day, as a builder, what can I do?
In the last couple of years we have shifted our posture from “just trying to make it” to (with the help of some success) how can we help others learn this craft? We are all along questioning what it means to build a building that is good for the whole world and not just the clients’ that trust us so dearly to make them a high quality; beautiful building that will keep them safe.
To take this up means to cultivate peoples’ very own agency to build. We decided to start trying to find ways to make it possible for people from other countries who were interested in learning to be able to come to our shop and see what it is like to work as a carpenter here. We have had people come for as little as a few hours or a day to a young man who is due to be here for a full year on a cultural studies visa striving to learn this craft. In just a year we have had dozens of people visit, and each individual has a different idea of what he or she wants to learn and how long he or she has to learn. Each individual has different goals and skills and dreams in regards to building.
As a human there is a pride that can get in the way, a pride that says,
“What do you think you can learn in one day, or even one week, or even one year?!”
As a human there is also a fear that can get in the way,
“What if they are better than me?”
“What if they take my business?”
“What if they don’t approve of me?”
And yet we can choose to see through that voice, to put down that thought.
Each persons own agency, their own ability to do this, on any level, is so profoundly amazing, and this sense of agency alone needs to be cultivated for us to find a way to take up our compassionate humanity and create a world where we can all live and thrive. It is the same agency that we have in a vote for a politician, the same agency that we have in a choice to eat for our health, or to help our neighbor who might be in a jam, or to step aside and let someone else go first…moment to moment, an agency to make this world one that we can all thrive in.
Believing in ‘big’ things like businesses and governments and countries and any group you can name makes us lose sight of the biggest, unbounded self that we are.
Our own unbound self is not a belief; it is right in front of us AS the agency that is constantly available. So when we meet you all in this new year we want to keep respecting your sense of agency to build, to build well, for the whole world, and we look forward to honoring the urgency that is necessary to move through this time in history, moment by moment, one building at a time.
Happy New Year,
Jon
A lesson for the Architects /
Lesson for the Architects
This past Sunday we had the opportunity to meet with a group of architects from the ‘Registered Architect club’ and show them some of the carpentry trade as well as have them try their hand at cutting a tenon and the appropriate hole for the tenon. It is a task that for us seems terrifically ‘normal’ or ‘simple’ but when teaching a lay person one really starts to realize all of the lessons that one has learned to make that task a simple one. The thing that occurred to me the most was really the use of the geometry of the body in carpentry as opposed to strength. A simple task becomes simple because unnecessary energy is not spent. The geometry of the body alone allows this and can even help a beginner to really start to grasp the basics from cut number one. It was a fun day with a lot of great folks.
We also cut a few of the joints that we use most often in our work that are tried and true over centuries.
Feast your eyes!
HonRenJi temple /
UshiMado
Several weekends ago I was able to take a Sunday off and headed with my wife to the nearby town of UshiMado. She has researched some of the beautiful villages in the area we live and is always up for a trip, so we packed up some snacks and made the hour plus drive to this seaside town for a pottery exhibition and touring. The afternoon was spent in an old home that used to receive the court of Korea during a period in Japanese history when Korea was considered by the Japanese to be a pinnacle of culture and sophistication. After a light dinner we were getting ready to make the drive home when our eyes were led to a beautiful temple across from the restaurant where we had dined. We decided to watch the sunset from the higher ground of the temple’s garden, and to our surprise it was not an ordinary temple but a large and exquisite grounds deemed a special cultural heritage site. I think perhaps it is the most beautiful grounds I have seen in Japan to date.
Enjoy the pics!
The first 5 are of the home where the pottery exhibition was held, the rest are of HonRenJi temple grounds.
A festival jinriki /
We were approached by the Priest of a large shrine near my home in Kurashiki about remaking the over one-hundred year old wheeled cart that carried the float for their festival each year. In Japan, the notion of the festival is two-fold. The word itself (祭る, matsuru) means to feast and celebrate, but first and foremost to offer prayer, deify, and worship. As far as I can tell this is a tradition that most countries in the world have had and/or still have but here in Japan many people's live are quite founded in the festival that their small village, or perhaps large city holds each year. It is a staggeringly large event in either case, and people work diligently together to make it memorable for children and adults alike.
This (台, dai) that we have had the opportunity to work on has been an interesting study. Albeit a small piece compared to many architectural projects we work on everything has to work in tandem with two different sets of wheels, and the springs and axles that accompany them. It is an ingenious device that can travel through large and small streets with flexibility. That said the wood had to be considered, milled and juxtaposed in a way that was suitable for such a little buggy.
The top boards and the handle are an oak for sturdiness under the wear and tear of having the large float ride on them. The framework is a chestnut in following with the older existing jinriki. The rest of the float is done in a local Japanese cypress to be rot resistant, be long lasting, and have a lovely smell.
Soon we should have the new bronze work for the corners, just a bit more and she's ready to go home!
Great fun! Thanks to Ashitaka Shrine for the opportunity!
Handle for an architecture office /
This week between projects we have taken a few hours each day to work with Tony Schonhardt of HEW making the front door handle for a Shanghai architecture office. We are using two beautiful pieces of reclaimed chestnut for each side with the exterior piece being chosen for the character of a large crack in the wood. This crack is rare in the it is the result of what in Japan is known as 入り皮 (i ri ka wa). This is where the tree has begun to form bark but then has more growth rings around that bark as it continues to grow larger. This detail is expressed with a traditional bowtie inlay that one often sees in large tabletops for use in keeping them from spreading with the expansion/contraction of the wood over time. In this case the bowtie (or butterfly as they refer to it in Japan) joint becomes a main structural support in the exterior piece and we have chosen to make it out of brass rather than the common hardwoods that are typically used in this joinery. The brass design is harder and more time consuming to fashion but holds the piece together nicely and should serve to patina beautifully over time with the handle and its use. As people grab or push the handle to enter the office they will be greeted with an excellent example of materials that age beautifully, and the oil from their very hands will do the work of polishing the piece.
