Kesurokai

Books / Japanese aesthetics

I recently started re-reading Soetsu Yanagi's book The Unknown Craftsman and am feeling a little frustrated. I enjoyed it so much last time, but now I have mixed feelings.

Having read Brian Moeran's book Folk Art Potters of Japan (see background reading) I am tuned into the close relationship between Yanagi and Bernard Leach, and see how they greatly influenced each others thinking. Now, as I read the Unknown Craftsman, I am not sure whose voice I hear. Leach reveals in the foreword that he had to abandon his original manuscript after an assistant, who was fluent in both English and Japanese, revealed it was "too much my [Leach's] interpretation of Yanagi to be called a translation."

I feel as if I am reading Yanagi through a lens created by Leach and would love a more neutral translation. Of course the best would be to read it in Japanese, but I have to be realistic and acknowledge that will never happen. (I am a huge fan of classic literature and have always had a fancy to read Dostoevsky and Tolstoy in their native language too!)

It is none the less a good book, I just see it in a different light now. The Leach / Yanagi vision of aesthetics is an east-west fusion, interesting in its own right, but perhaps not the insight into traditional Japanese aesthetics I was after.

Off on a tangent with a different flawed beauty...

 

Ouch! Robin just took a nasty chunk out of his Japanese axe, catching it on a nail that must have grown into the wood he was hewing for fence posts for his bridge. That will need to go on the grinder to be removed...

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!)

Website auf Deutsch

As Kesurokai's organiser, Hannes Schnelle, and many of our craftsmen are German I have just updated our German website www.kesurokai.de This was not the easiest task because it is a long time since I studied German at school!

So, many thanks to green woodworkers Michail and Katy Schütte for translating the bulk of the text and my kind friend Michael Hohl for helping me finish it off.

American broad axe

A slightly frivolous Sunday morning post as I came across this picture yesterday when looking for pictures of Robin's Japanese carpenters axe! I don't think it is something Robin really has a use for, but it was offered to him by a friend in the States and it is such a wonderful thing he couldn't resist adding it to his collection.

It is as much as I can do to pick it up with two hands so I have every admiration for people who can swing one all day. It is however as much about technique as strength. If you watch Amemiya san in the youTube video near the bottom of this post you can see how he uses the weight of the axe to cut the wood, like a swinging pendulum.

Japanese carpenters axe

The axe Robin Wood is using for hewing his fence posts was bought for him by Hannes Schnelle during his last trip to Japan setting up the forthcoming Kesurokai event. It is a beautiful tool and gives Robin so much pleasure! Here it is when it arrived, packed in beautiful, wafer-thin wood shavings from a plane...

 

Robin's Japanese friend and fellow turner Tomio Imaru gave us this rough translation of the text on it:

Maybe the big 2 kanji words on the blade are the smith's name"kajiya-mei". Usually a bladesmith puts his smiths name (which sometimes does not coincide with his real name) on the blade. It looks like 幸英. On the lower side of the blade I see the location of the work shop name 土佐. Tosa is a Japanese prefectural name and is located in Shikoku island. Almost all Japanese axes have 7 stripes; four are on the right side of the blade and three are on the left side. These stripes mean the thanks for wood,  safe woodworking, and offer alhohol and crops.

Robin loves axes and has a large collection - I will see if I can get him to photograph a few and write a little about them.

Cleaving a large oak log

Robin Wood has recently been cleaving a very large oak log which he is making into fence posts and rails. His current major project is building a footpath bridge in Bradfield, not far from where we live, and the fence will form the approach to the bridge.

The oak was felled in Sheffield's Eccleshall Woods for someone else's building project but it soon became clear that there were a lot of hidden nails in it; after excavating 6 or more they decided it was too likely to damage the sawmill. It seemed a shame to Robin that such a beautiful piece of wood might go to waste, so he decided to try working it with hand tools.

The cleaving process was started using metal wedges, then long, thin dry oak wedges which Robin carved himself, each pounded in with a large sledgehammer. Once in half, the two pieces (12' long and weighing about half a ton each) were split down and down, each time going into half so the split would run straight.

Robin's comment afterwards was that it was a very hard days work, but a joy to be able to make good use of such gorgeous material where power tools had failed!

Finally, a picture of the site showing where the first fence posts are going in. Robin has been hewing the surfaces with his Japanese carpenters ono (axe) and finds it a joy to do this work. There cannot be many examples of Japanese style hewing in the UK, though probably no one will ever notice.

 

More images and text on Robin's blog here and here.

Profile: Robin Wood

Robin Wood's craft skills are wide ranging. He is perhaps best known for is turning on a traditional foot-powered lathe and the book he wrote about the history of the craft The Wooden Bowl. We teach spoon carving courses together ... he's my husband in case you hadn't figured that out! He also uses traditional timber framing techniques to make bridges, stiles, gates, benches and other countryside furniture.

He is also passionate about preserving and promoting traditional skills and set up the Heritage Crafts Association as an advocacy body for traditional heritage crafts. Working in partnership with Government and key agencies, it provides a focus for craftspeople, groups, societies and guilds, as well as individuals who care about the loss of traditional crafts skills, and works towards a healthy and sustainable framework for the future.

His motivations for attending Kesurokai are twofold. Firstly, from a craft skills point of view he is keen to have the opportunity to work alongside and share skills with the other craftsmen, both European and Japanese. Secondly he is seeking inspiration for ways in which the Heritage Crafts Association might find new ways of passing skills from one generation to the next, a tradition the Japanese have held onto for longer than in the UK.

Full details about Robin here on his web site and here on his blog.

Some new funding

Cormac Seekings has just had the great news that he has received a grant from the GB Sasakawa Foundation for his study tour of Minka construction and carpentry which will follow on directly after he has been working at Kesurokai.

There's more about Cormac and his work here.

道 Dō

If I can get the funding, I shall extend my stay in Japan by 10 days to attend a conference in Tokyo which is about the concept of 道 Dō in ethnography (see below for an explanation).

Rather than having to write a paper there is a strand for artifacts which can include film, and initial enquiries with the conference organisers imply they would be very interested in Kesurokai. So hopefully I will find somewhere to stay for the week between the end of Kesurokai and the beginning of the conference and do a first edit on the video.

The funding forms are due in at the end of the month - I should work on those rather than blogging!

From the Epic 2010 conference web site:

道 Dō captures the sense of individual mastery that is achieved only with the help of a community and its rich heritage. 道 Dō implies a body of knowledge and tradition with an ethic and an aesthetic. 道 Dō is the “path” we have travelled and also the way ahead of us.

道 Dō in ethnography symbolizes the dynamic between ethnography’s internal strengths (its essence, our values, its heritage, its rigor and disciplined approach) and its applications to the world (to enhancement of people’s lives, to innovation, to transformation of industries, to business growth). It is the “path” we have come from but also the way ahead of us.

Background reading

I feel acutely aware of the cultural differences between Europe and Japan and in preparation for out visit I have been doing some background reading. (I will confess to being a prolific reader and, with Robin being a prolific book-buyer, I have plenty to go at!)

First was Japanese woodworking tools: their tradition, spirit and use by Toshio Odate. This book not only describes the tools in great detail but also gives a wonderful insight into the life of Japanese craftsmen. The author now lives in America but was born in Japan and served an apprenticeship as a traditional sliding-door maker. [ISBN 0-85442-075-4]

Then there is an interlocking trio of books which are actually about pottery rather than wood working but again provide insight into Japanese aesthetics and craftsmanship.

• The Unknown Craftsman by Soetsu Yanagi, the founder of Japan's folkcraft movement, is a classic book looking at the values of art, beauty and handwork. [ISBN 0-87011-352-6]
• Susan Peterson's book Shoji Hamada: a potter's way and work provides a lovely description of the workings of the pottery over the four-month period spent there by the author. [ISBN 0-7136-6772-9]
• Folk art potters of Japan: beyond an anthropology of aesthetics by Brian Moeran is a more scholarly tome, but puts the other two in perspective. It discusses the British origins of the aesthetic ideals of Yanagi and Hamada and how they influenced and indeed changes the lives of Japanese folk art potters. [ISBN 0-7007-1039-6]

I could go on and read the various texts by and about Bernard Leach but I think I might have learned enough about pottery for now!