Yakisugi (or Shou Sugi Ban 焼き杉)

Yakisugi is the traditional Japanese technique of burning the surface of wood to make it more resistant to weather and insects.  Before modern industrial methods, this was achieved by briefly aligning wood planks in a triangular chimney above a small fire.  Once removed, the planks of wood were extinguished, scrubbed clean and then sealed with tung oil. This very sustainable, no-VOC method of finishing timber has recently increased in popularity among architects and designers for both its aesthetics and its green nature.  Today the process is typically executed with a propane torch as shown in this video

Japanese technique of preserving/antiquing wood "Shou-sugi-ban Yakisugi 焼き杉". The oil used for final finish is tung oil.

Detail of Shou Sugi ban wood planks

Detail of Shou Sugi ban wood planks

In addition to the enhanced material longevity the process reveals the natural variations of the wood, adding depth to wood grain and increasing contrast around knots and other density changes.

Shou sugi ban house, Image via Architizer

Shou sugi ban house, Image via Architizer



The Ikea Effect

Woodworking benches at the College of the Redwoods

Woodworking benches at the College of the Redwoods

Laura Mays, Professor of fine woodworking, College of the Redwoods writes in her thesis:

 "I wondered about the validity of craft, what role it plays in a modern industrialized society, how the long hours involved in making objects in a traditional manner can justify the high cost of the labour involved, whether the final user gains anything by the less industrialized processes involved, or whether in fact it was a self-indulgence on my part that I was asking them to fund."

In the second half of this great TED talk:

https://www.ted.com/talks/dan_ariely_what_makes_us_feel_good_about_our_work?language=en

Dan Ariely explains his and his collegues research on what has been dubbed "The Ikea Effect" which is a cognititive bias to place a higher value on products they partially create themselves.

I think this is at least part of an answer to Laura's question.  I believe the value of understanding and meaning is real and rising in our new knowledge economy.   Perhaps we all just love what we understand and when we build something ourselves we understand it more completely.   Of course we value it more than the thing that we don't know...  After all, I love all my friends I know more than all the friends that I don't know yet.  

And I love my chair.  Made it myself Yo.

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Shaking Off Ornamentation with Honesty, Utility and Simplicity

"The guiding Shaker principles of honesty, utility, and simplicity found expression in various crafts: furniture, boxes, and textiles made by the Shakers are renowned for their minimalist design and unstinting quality. Rejecting excessive ornament because it ostensibly encouraged the sin of pride...."    

-The Metropolitan Museum of Art,  http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/shak/hd_shak.htm

Produced by the Shakers at the chair factory in Mount Lebanon, New York under the direction of Brother William Perkins and Sister Lilian Barlow. Circa 1925.

Produced by the Shakers at the chair factory in Mount Lebanon, New York under the direction of Brother William Perkins and Sister Lilian Barlow. Circa 1925.

"We want a good plain substantial article, yea, one that bears credit to our profession and tells who and what we are, true and honest before the world, without hypocrisy or any faults covering.  The world at large can scarcely keep pace with it self with its stiles and fasshions which last out a short time, when something still more worthless and absurd takes its place, let good enough alone."   -Brother Orren Haskings

 

This beautifully simple chair clearly shares DNA with the famous Chiavari chair made in Northern Italy and its progeny, the Superleggera.  Maybe all of these well known chairs look similar because they were designed with the common values of utility and simplicity.   This points to the shared beliefs of Shakers and Modernists like Mies van der Rohe and Buckminster Fuller as well as practitioners of Japanese traditional design.   This disparate group of artists and craftspeople in different eras all found sacred inspiration in their mission to remove the unnecessary.

These chairs are not being made in the quantities they once were.  The Shakers are a celibate lot so their numbers have diminished to just a few people and the Chiavari chair was succeeded by Michael Thonet's  brilliantly simple No 14 Chair. over a century ago.   The characters keep changing but the undeniable virtue of simplicty lives on.

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Michael Thonet Goes With the Grain

The bentwood No. 14 Chair is a chair you know.  It is more produced than any chair in the history of man.  Can you picture it?   It was called "the coffee shop chair" or the "chair of chairs" and below is a photo of one of the 50 million or so produced.

The primary inovation of this chair was the use of complex fixtures and steam bending to create the simple and comfortable light-weight form.  Using this technique, Thonet was able to overcome the orthotropic character of wood by keeping the wood grain all in the same (and stongest) direction.  Unlike metal, wood has dramatically different strength in the different three axis.  The strength along the grain is many times greater than across the grain  or radially.  A bit later, Alvar Alto demonstrated his command of the othotropic material with this chair...

Sometimes woodworkers can get the wood to bend with just steam and some muscle, other times they rely on a process of laminating multiple thin sheets together with glue.  Either way, it demonstates that if one is aware of and repects the unique properties of wood, amazing things are possible!

Turning Japanese

You may  have noticed that The California Workshop appears to have an undeniable Japanese influence.  We don't have Japanese ancestors that we know of but we do have some shared values.  

Woodworking in Japan is a long respected and preserved tradition.  It goes back centuries to a time of woodworking guilds that protected the secrets of their trade.

Why are the Japanese so skilled in this area?   To start with, Japan is a country with abundant forests that encouraged the use of wood as a raw material when masonry was commonly paired with wood construction in Europe.  The tradition of woodworking is unbroken from a time when the use of metal for fasteners or joinery was unavailable.   And over the centuries, Chinese carpenters and their skills and practices were absorbed by the Japanese guilds. Also, woodworking was intimately tied to spiritual practices as shrines and temples were routinely constructed and reconstructed in a diciplined, traditional, and mindful manner.   A perfect storm for mastery....   

In many cases, woodworkers would go into the forest and select a tree for a specific project.  Today there are woodworkers that determine what they will make based on the piece of wood that they have available.  The wood "chooses" its purpose and it is a manner of giving the wood a second life.  While we are unable to do this yet at our shop, we admire and share the appreciation for the tree and the thoughtfulness in execution.

Japanese Woodworking Joint

Japanese Woodworking Joint

So back we go to work, striving to appreciate as much as we can of the delicate nuanced skills of a centuries old trade. 

 

 

 

How is it so light and yet so strong?

Using the same "first principles thinking" that the brilliant Elon Musk gives credit to for his many novel and groundbreaking innovations, we redesigned the chair.

In Physics, there is a concept called Area Moment of Inertia.  You don't have to understand the details to understand the concept.  Basically, it is a method of calculating the resistance to forces applied to different cross-section shapes to determine which will provide the greatest stength in a given application. This teaches us that under many common loading conditions, material that is further away from the center of gravity of the cross-section is far more effective than the material near the center of gravity. It explains why a popsicle stick can be easily broken when flat but when rotated up ninety degrees takes on suprising strength. It also explains the shape of I-beams, bicycle frames and just about everything else you see that was designed by an engineer.

How much more effective is material that is further away from the neutral axis?  A lot more.  The moment of inertia is a function of the cube of the distance "d".  This difference is so dramatic that it makes the material that is close to the neutral axis insignificant by comparison.

So, why not remove it then?  

The 9611-010C Chair is completeley hollow. 1.27Kg

The 9611-010C Chair is completeley hollow. 1.27Kg

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Furniture Means Mobile

I am often asked what the purpose is of making a lightweight chair or table and I usually respond by saying how using less material makes it cheaper to make, ship or relocate. Sometimes I add some comments about sustainability or mention a quote like this one: "Art is the elimination of the unnecessary" - Pablo Picasso  .  But I always fail to mention that the word funiture and mobile are the same in many languages and the fact that mobility is the defining characteristic of funiture.   The word for funiture in Spanish is Muebles (moveables) Here are some other examples:

The word for furniture in French is meubles,  In Danish: møbler, Turkish: mobilya, Italian: mobili, Dutch: meubilair,  Swedish: möbler...you get the idea so lets get moving!

9611-008 Chair

9611-008 Chair

 




And...two more

The most visisble changes occuring now are in the back rest.  It is a stuggle to find the right mix of comfort, stength, weight and ease of assembly.  Revision "S" below is difficult to put together and isn't that comfortable. Revision "T" below it goes a long way to solving both of those problems but still needs a little more strength.  Back to the drawing board!

9611-009 RevS

9611-009 RevS

9611-009 Rev T, 1.32Kg

9611-009 Rev T, 1.32Kg