Kesurokai

Sharing skills

Today was quite rainy so we were thankful for the blue tarpaulins that shelter us ... and that it was still pleasantly warm! Work on the timber frames continued to progress well and some of the craftsmen took the opportunity for some wonderful new experiences.

Firstly, our junior blacksmith, Gunther spent a while working with the Japanese smith who is a well known sword smith from the area. Whilst our translator, Rahel (seen here with our senior blacksmith Manne), understandably struggles with specialist words communication usually transcends words:

Then Robin had a wonderful time learning Japanese style hewing from Hannes. With this being the main beam, which is situated 12 foot up in the air ready for sawing, and its surface being wet and slippery, it did not make an ideal beginners piece but Robin got on wonderfully. However I think he now wants to buy a proper Japanese hewing axe!

To finish some video of them in action along with one of the Japanese carpenters who came to have a play with some European hewing axes and helped Jochen to finish surface one of the beams. 

Craft learning and "the crit"

"The crit" is central to traditional design education and I sat in on one this week as part of my current research at Sheffield Hallam University. It brought back memories of doing it myself, it is a fairly scary experience, and it made me think about the Japanese craftsmen's apprenticeship experiences described in Edo craftsmen : master artisans of old Tokyo.

Firstly let me describe "the crit" for the uninitiated; it's a little like X Factor or Britain's Got Talent, but the audience are also putting on the show, they are students each showing their latest work. One by one they go to the front of the room and show images of their work on PowerPoint and hand around things they have made. The 'judges' are a group of lecturers who sit around a table making notes, discussing, asking the students questions and offering advice.

It is only three weeks until the students hand in their final projects and they need help knowing what to do to get it finished satisfactorily. Quite a few haven't made good use of the Easter holidays and are going to have a busy few weeks. The atmosphere is a bit tense, the lecturers at times have to be quite blunt to the students about their work, but whilst they are tough, they are also very fair and very supportive. There feels to be a close bond between the lecturers and students. At the end of the session another student drops into the room to give a little box to one of the lecturers; it contains a cup-cake and pinned to the top is a handwritten thank-you note!

Whilst the students go through this many times during their three years at University, the old craftsmen in Toyko had often started at a very young age and continued under the critical eye of their master for many years. For some it was clearly a positive experience, but others spoke with perplexing pride of the fact that their masters never praised their work and they were reluctant to praise their own work themselves. I can't decide if it is false modesty or a genuine feeling that they ll never be as good as their masters. Either way, it doesn't strike me as healthy.

This somehow joins up with my other major project with Open University where I have been part of the team writing a new course in Design Thinking which is entirely delivered online and all the students study it remotely. I am tutoring one of the first batches of students through the course and also moderator on the student forum so party to a wide range of online interactions. In this situation it seems to be quite difficult to "crit" the students and even getting them to do critical analysis of their own work is not easy. This too is not healthy!

I feel that for online / distance learning to be successful there needs to be a way of getting the right sort of "crit" into the arena. It needs to fall into the 'tough but fair' category, which partly comes from the attitude of the teachers (those I observed clearly worked well together as a group), and partly from their relationship with the students. Fostering all this online is very different to dealing with face-to-face relationships and so much of it falls outside the scope of the sorts of learning resources I have been designing, however it is clearly vital to their success. Hmmmm ...

Profile: Ulrik Hjort Lassen

Ulrik is from Denmark, but currently based in Sweden whilst studying for a PhD in practical carpentry, researching working methods in timber framed constructions. His particular interest is in the different procedures of “Afbinding, Opsnøring and Tilridsning,” Danish words which (unsatisfactory) can be translated into layout and scribing.

The Scandinavians take their traditional crafts much more seriously than in the UK and have an excellent educational programme to show for it. Ulrik started his carpentry training at the Dacapo Craft School in Sweden, which was originally a vocational training centre for carpenters specialising in traditional building crafts, but then became part of Göteborg University. So he now has a Bachelors degree and is currently undertaking a five year research programme for his PhD.

Whilst I admire the Scandinavian’s attitude to traditional craft, it seems that practice-led PhDs are not well established in the field and he is still struggling with “ways of executing practical research in an academic world without losing the performance of the craft”. Having done a practice-led PhD myself and subsequently been doing research training for others, this might something I can help with. I am looking forwards to spending some time with Ulrik in Japan and discussing this.

In the mean time, a large part of Ulrik’s time is spent on practical building projects, both on his own in the building yard, and as a part of different projects, which have been all over Europe since much of the timber construction in Sweden is with whole log construction, rather than timber framing. The Japanese Kesurokai is an opportunity to spread his knowledge a little further!

 Ulrik will travel to Japan with his fiancée, Lina Lo Gillefalk, who is just completing a qualification as a conservation officer specialising in the built heritage (“bebyggelsesantikvarie”). She will be an observer on the project and together they will write about the importance of practical workshops to maintain both practical skills and the intangible cultural heritage of the building crafts.

There's more about Ulrik, including some video, on this fascinating French timber framing web site.

Distance learning

Two years ago Robin first had email correspondence with a Japanese turner, Tomio Imaru. Inspired by my videos of Robin on YouTube and Robin's book 'The Wooden Bowl', he had built himself a bowl turning lathe, forged his own tools and taught himself to use them. They keep in touch over the internet; Imaru san has proved a good learner and makes lovely bowls!

Now they hope to meet properly if Robin can make arrangements for Imaru san to visit the Chisana Kesurokai work site whilst we are in Japan in August. It would be a great experience for them both, as there is nothing like working with a fellow craftsman to progress your skills.

Here's some video I made of Robin with another craftsman who he mentors from a distance, Michail Schütte, who is German so we see a little more often!

Traditional craft apprenticeship

As a great admirer of traditional craftsmanship, I am saddened when craftsmen come to the end of their working practice without having passed their unique skills on. However, the more I read about traditional apprenticeship, the more I can see why this has happened and cannot wish for a return to the old ways of teaching.

I just finished reading "Edo Craftsmen, master artisans of old Tokyo" and of the twelve featured craftsmen only two appear both to have long-term viable businesses and trained apprentices to pass on their skills. Part of the problem is the increasing accessibility of cheaper, mass-produced alternatives to whatever they make. However, many craftsmen manage to market their produce in such conditions by selling a small volume at higher prices to more discerning customers. The failure is in part caused by a lack of younger people coming into the crafts with the vision to exploit such markets.

The descriptions in the book of the craftsmen's experience of traditional apprenticeship reveals both the rigour and the modern-day drawbacks of the system. They would start very young and spend several years doing menial tasks whilst observing the breadth of the practice, then gradually take on small tasks followed by increasingly complex ones as they grew older and more able. The emphasis was not on teaching, but learning; observing and imitating, rather than being shown how.

With a good master and a willing student this clearly works well. In her study of the Japanese ceramicist Shoji Hamada, Susan Peterson describes the relationship between deshi (apprentice) and master: “To learn as a deshi means to submit one’s self to the master, to leave one’s own self, to become ‘in’ the master. This ‘surrender’ to the master does not mean just blind imitation, but gives a spiritual discipline and the opportunity to absorb a skill into one’s bones.”

However, it is a system that relies on a huge amount of trust and non-verbal communication between master and apprentice, and that is not always going to work well. Whilst a very strict master might ensure that very high standards of craft skills are passed from one generation to the next, it might well be at the cost of creativity and the ability of the younger person to see new opportunities and develop new markets. Given also that young people stay in school much longer nowadays, I cannot see a traditional craft apprenticeship being a very appealing option.

The future, however is not all bleak, I think there are craftsmen who have adapted to new ways of teaching and also multimedia offers huge potential to record and transmit quite complex skills. In my last research project I worked with traditional Sheffield knife makers and made an online resource which was successfully used by a variety of learners. The wonders of the internet mean information travels fast and those who wish to learn in this way can readily access such resources and conduct their own apprenticeships in their own way.

Medieval technology via 21st Century technology

Medieval timber framed buildings were massive, beautifully built and many are still standing to this day. All this was achieved using very simple tools and machinery ... and without the sort of standard measuring systems we have today. How? ... well, daisy wheel geometry is believed to be the way in which it was done.

Hannes and Markus spent the weekend working out their geometry, drawing up the plans for the pavilion to be built in Japan. Whilst chatting about this to Hannes on Skype he showed me how you can share your screen with the person you are talking to, which I am afraid I didn't know about ... yes, he's a traditional carpenter and I'm a multimedia designer! Even better, he then revealed this was how he had learned to do daisy wheel geometry. During their first big Kesurokai meeting, UK expert Cormac Seekings explained how it worked via Skype, a laptop computer and a data projector. A fantastic meeting of medieval and modern technologies!

I will ask Cormac for a similar lesson, but the background is that Laurie Smith has studied and measured many hundreds of timber framed buildings and found they conform to a layout that was probably constructed geometrically. On many geometrical symbols can be seen scribed or carved into the timbers which reinforces the theory. So originally many buildings would have been laid out on site with a divider to scribe out reference circles for the layout along with a plumb-bob and chalk line.

Nowadays, plans are made in advance on paper, then a scale model constructed to check accuracy. For Kesurokai this is essential because a cutting list of the timber needed must be sent in advance to Japan so everything is ready when we get there in August. Here is part of the nearly-completed plan:

 

They are currently working on the model and will send me pictures when it is done.

Finally here is a video of French master carpenter Jean-Louis Velentin talking about roof geometry... I am not normally a fan of 'talking head' videos, but he talks with such passion it is quite compelling (or maybe I am just easily seduced by a French accent!)

Profile: Nicola Wood

I guess I should have introduced myself first, but better late than never! I am involved in this project because I am a designer and researcher ... and married to a green woodworker, but more about that later.

My involvement with Kesurokai is primarily as media recorder. I shall be photographing and videoing and, technology permitting, blogging live from Japan during the main event in August. On my return I plan to make a short documentary film about the project.

Now a bit more about my background; I am primarily what is known as a multimedia designer which, roughly speaking, is designing things that appear on a computer, but I also work a great deal with video too. My main area of interest is craft skills; how they are learned, how they are taught and how multimedia can be used to record them and help them pass from one person to another.

Whilst much of my work has been based in the world of academia (I have gained an MA and PhD whilst doing it), it is also immensely practical. I have spent many hours hanging out in craftsmen's workshops observing with my video camera and notebook. I have spent many hours with learners, making and testing learning materials, sketching and annotating to understand what is needed to pass on complex skills.

The origin of all this is my partner, Robin Wood, who is well known both for his traditional turning / green woodworking and his campaigning for Heritage Crafts ... but more of that in another post! Working alongside Robin has both given me a unique insight into craft practices and given me the opportunity to develop my own skills in Scandinavian-style spoon carving with knives and axes.

Bringing all my interests together, we have developed a very successful programme to teach spoon carving as a short course and have been delighted by how many students carry on carving after learning with us. The learning materials I have developed during these courses are available on the internet for those attending courses and will hopefully be made into a book before the end of the year.

There is more about me on my web site, including links to things I have designed, my video on youTube ... and even academic papers!