Japanese woodworking and hand tools video

[Buckeye]

If you have 30 minutes this is well worth watching for an insight into Japanese, woods, joints and hand tools

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bprv5sLI5jo

Not sure my back could handle the cross legged planing technique!

 

[Trafalgar]

Forgive me, but what I saw in the video is largely 2nd rate junk compared to this:

https://www.youtube.com/results?search_ ... ippendale+

I will never understand the need to look to Japan for woodworking inspiration, either in the styles, tools, or methods of work. The Western woodworking tradition covers it all - from spare, exquisitely joined forms to pieces smothered in ornamentation, to everything in-between. There is something for every taste.

 

[thick_mike]

Thanks for posting this.

Loved that neat little stool at the end.

 

[boggy]

What is the wee seat called, and are plans available?

 

[D_W]

Forgive me, but what I saw in the video is largely 2nd rate junk compared to this:

https://www.youtube.com/results?search_ ... ippendale+

I will never understand the need to look to Japan for woodworking inspiration, either in the styles, tools, or methods of work. The Western woodworking tradition covers it all - from spare, exquisitely joined forms to pieces smothered in ornamentation, to everything in-between. There is something for every taste.

In Japan, things like hidden mitered dovetail cases are still common, even for middle class customers. Middle class customers might splurge here and think they're going upscale by buying a pine table from pottery barn.

 

[Trafalgar]

Sam Maloof built his chairs with drywall screws and made the plugs a somewhat decorative feature. These sold in the mid-five figures and up when he was alive and I assume for more now that's he's gone.

If the Japanese are more appreciative of fine joinery that's great, but I'm somewhat doubtful this is any more the case with the average Japanese consumer than it is with the average American consumer.

 

[D_W]

Sam Maloof built his chairs with drywall screws and made the plugs a somewhat decorative feature. These sold in the mid-five figures and up when he was alive and I assume for more now that's he's gone.

If the Japanese are more appreciative of fine joinery that's great, but I'm somewhat doubtful this is any more the case with the average Japanese consumer than it is with the average American consumer.

I couldn't comment on average, because I don't know if the average consumer buys tansu, I just know that some middle class folks do. They are done by hand to exceptionally tight standards and not with nails.

The rest of the stuff (wardrobe and cabinet furniture), I don't know about.

Personally, I don't know any individual who is middle class and who has bought anything close to the quality level of tansu that was made new. When I frequent amish or mennonite shops, the closest you get is jig-made dovetails, and not the kind that come on a $129 dovetail jig, but the kind that some amish guy sits in front of a piece of commercial equipment and feeds drawer sides in at high speed - making some very ugly (but strong) dovetailed drawers.

Well made furniture is here in droves - used - and I'm sure that it is around memphis, too. Anyone buying nice furniture here is buying old furniture that has been reconditioned.

I've been in a lot of physicians' and surgeons houses, and I've never seen hand made furniture there, either.

I have to think that the draw for the japanese stuff is that you can actually find people making it, and not just two or three people making $10,000 pieces.

 

[Trafalgar]

This all may very well be the case David. I'm hard pressed to imagine anything less relevant or important to me than Japanese woodworking, their tools, methods of work, etc.

One could substitute the name of practically any industrialized nation into my comment about consumers.

Sophisticated collectors of furniture and other aficionados apparently don't mind that their Maloof rocker is largely held together with drywall screws. The people with the money get to have the last say I suppose.

My personal preference would be said rocker over even the most exquisitely constructed Tansu piece.

 

[D_W]

I'd prefer neither. Maloof's rockers don't really do anything for me, but that's the way art goes. It moves some people and not others. I'd rather have a chair made by curtis buchanan, but when it all comes down to it, if I wanted a chair like that badly enough, I'd learn to make them.

One thing that I respect about the Japanese is that they do collectively do a much better job of emphasizing quality over quantity - perhaps europe does that, too. And there is some left in China. There are other things japanese that I don't think so much of (but I'm German in ancestry and I don't find much need to have expensive toys that operate on candle power, either).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U98YYBeG7NI (I don't see much consumer level stuff being made like that in the US - and tansu may not be something I'd consume, but it is not something only purchased by the uber wealthy there).

As far as the rationality of consumers buying a maloof chair, well, I'd put that in the same category of Beats headphones and $300 chinese rubber rain boots with a scottish name on them. I don't count on that type of rationality to mean much, drywall screws or not.

Now, I'll stand out of the way and you can pee as far as you'd like.

 

[Slinger]

I thought the video and the workmanship was excellent and to class it as 'second rate junk' is unbelievable.
Slinger

 

[Trafalgar]

What Japanese furnituremaking lacks in depth and breadth (compared to western furnituremaking) it makes up in over-wrought joinery.

 

[lurker]

I will never understand the need to look to Japan for woodworking inspiration, either in the styles, tools, or methods of work. The Western woodworking tradition covers it all - from spare, exquisitely joined forms to pieces smothered in ornamentation, to everything in-between. There is something for every taste.

I thought it was just me and I was missing something.

 

[rkboston]

Or you could call it integrity.

What Japanese furnituremaking lacks in depth and breadth (compared to western furnituremaking) it makes up in over-wrought joinery.

 

[Trafalgar]

You could. You could also believe that inanimate objects like furniture and tools have souls. A bridge or two too far to me...

 

[AndyT]

I'm still struggling to understand the statement "What Japanese furnituremaking lacks in depth and breadth (compared to western furnituremaking) it makes up in over-wrought joinery."

What do "depth and breadth" mean here? Are you saying that across the centuries, looking at all furniture from the very cheapest to the most expensive, the whole of the Japanese economy has failed to meet some unspecified furniture related needs, and was therefore too "narrow and shallow"? Are there furniture types that it was or is impossible to buy in Japan, that are only available in the west? (And when you say "western" do you mean the rest of the world, or Europe or the USA?)

I don't understand what you mean by "over-wrought joinery" either. I do understand that many US speakers of English use the word "joinery" as a synonym for "joints" so I can see that when you say "joinery" you don't mean joiner's work, such as doors and windows, like I would. But I really don't get what you mean when you describe some joints (which ones? used for what purposes? in what markets) as "over-wrought."

Maybe I would understand you better if you gave some specific examples, but if you really are describing the entire output of Japan and much of the rest of the world across all time, you would need a great many examples to sustain such a sweeping generalisation.

 

[Trafalgar]

I had occasion to visit friends of a friend over our long holiday weekend. Their home was clearly of Dutch Colonial design and pretty old by U.S. and Memphis standards (house is great!). We walked into the home and it was as if I had been transported to a Japanese steakhouse. It was just god-awful though I'm sure the stuff was otherwise very fine and very collectible (these are not poor people). I had to suppress a gasp when I walked through the door.

Asian furniture seems to be a style that needs context more than most other styles.

Let's just leave it at that.

 

[D_W]

I can't disagree with that - it's out of place if the whole place isn't shoji screens and floor sitting, etc. I'm not a japanophile despite having some japanese tools (a minority by a mile, though). I don't have or want tansu (it's novel when it's made well like in that video, though), I don't feel a need to be infringed upon by spiritual wood beliefs (krenov had some of that hocum, too, didn't he?). Just take it for what it is and extract the parts you want or none at all.

If we got stuck on the philosophy that went along with everything, probably most of us would be offended by the shakers or other people who had specific beliefs when making furniture.

If you generalize further, very little looks correct in my house (which was made at the beginning of the industrial design era). Plain furniture looks good. Federalist furniture would look ridiculous, as would windsor chairs, most of the dopey modern designs, etc. It's out of context in the house.

But the japanese chisels and kitchen knives are awfully nice, and you don't have to cry for trees to appreciate them. They cut western mortises and dovetails just fine.

 

[Trafalgar]

The wonderful thing about Japanese furniture in an authentic setting is that there is so little of it.

 

[Bluekingfisher]

Whatever you preferences or tastes the level of skill, knowledge and craftsmanship is incredible.

David

 

[Trafalgar]

While not furnituremaking, this has fascinated me to no end for years:

http://frenchtimberframing.blogspot.com/

http://stereotomy-blog.blogspot.com/201 ... ibing.html

An itch I desperately wish I had time to scratch.