Audio Visual Cart;

January 30th 2012.

This has locking casters underneath, the shelves are made from White Pine, each one piece 18″ wide, the rest is Fir and Maple. Made for a client who didnt like some of the mass produced metal A/V carts on offer. The wooden cart  makes it way warmer and  friendlier, its about the same weight and with wide joints in hard wood, glued and screwed almost as strong as cheap metal. Finished with polyermirized Tung oil

Spalted Maple Box.      December 15th 2011.

The client wanted it to resemble a shoe box. The number seven is carved into the top and stained black with a water based stain, it slides apart at the seven. Finished with Polymerised Linseed Oil.  13″ x 6″ x4.5″.  Spalting is a form of rot, and has three distinct types, White Rot, Pigmentation and Zone Lines. The black lines seen on the wood above are the zone lines these are caused by competing  fungi that form these as barriers to exclude other fungi and protect their resources. One common white rot fungus on the West Coast is Turkey Tail (Trametes versicolor) whose mushroom has proven cancer fighting qualities similar to the Reishi mushroom.

Bowl Turnings;

November 30th 2011.

Had some time to turn a few bowls, foreground is  Big leaf Maple and the other is Garry Oak from a wind blown tree we salvaged. I turned the oak when it was still green, unseasoned the water spinning off it as it turned on the lathe. As it dryed slowly, at first wrapped in a paper bag it, slowly changed shape, shrinking across the grain it has become quite oval.

Chanterelles,  (cantharellus formosus);  October 28th 2011;

Theres something so special about going mushroom hunting. Walking out into the chill of early autumn, the leaves of the Alders just starting to fall and the forest there, its cool shade pushing out from the trees. Its the start of a hunt and to have a connection with the forest is to be able to find the mushrooms. In the autumn this relationship for me is so special as im starting to miss the summer as nature becomes cool and gloomy, it can feel distant spending more time inside.

First of all you have to know the terrain, the local knowledge of where to go and the types of trees, their age and what the understory should be like. Its also recognising the way mushrooms grow, hugging the ridges, dips and hollows in lines and circles as if they follow invisible water drainage.

Once here in the soft light its the  sharp gaze looking through the patina of undergrowth that spots the prize. The some times colourful spouts of orange or the camouflage of the whites, like dead Salal leaves hidden so well that you have to kneel and peer across the forest floor to see them. You have to enter the forests umwelt and recognise the patterns that are hidden from a merely curious glance.

The chanterelles are the fruiting bodies of a vast mycorrhizal mat that lies just below the duff, (myco means mushroom and rhizal is ‘related to roots’). The mushroom obtain food from the tree in the form of certain sugars and the mycorrhiza in turn help increase water absorbtion for the host and fix nitrogen and other essential elements in a symbiotic relationship that benefits both. The health of the forest is tied directly into this relationship. In Paul Stamets book Mycellium Running he quotes research that identifies nearly 2,000 different fungi that interelate with Douglas Firs.

The logging of Vancouver Island has  increased the numbers of Chanterelle mushrooms as they seem to prefer maturing stands of mixed Douglas Fir forests. But this also has drawbacks because clearcut logging isnt going to stop soon.

As the Old Growth has become all logged out the forest industry is increasingly switching its attentions onto the second growth, with short  ‘crop rotations’ of  50-60 years, or much less. Then just as the mushrooms start to become established the clearcut logging destroys its mycorrhizal relationship with the tree which then take many years to become reestablished, as only 40 year old forest is seen as starting to become optimal for Chanterelles.

To have a prized ‘patch’ clear-cut does hurt, its not just losing the mushrooms but also losing the forest, a maturing forest that had started to get a sense of its individuation. With age it had begun to take on those attributes of Old Growth forests that are so enjoyable recognisable, the variability of trees and understory and how they relate to the the terrain, it had character. The logging destroys that and interferes with a type of connection with the land, a subtle relationship of presence and listening that draws us into gaining  our sustenance from it.

Glass Display Case;

October 7th 2012.

A display Case or Vitrine for a sequined  suit worn by a former star of   ‘Disney on Ice’ from the 1980s, commissioned by his family. Made from Fir, salvaged Teak and glass, the space below the suit is for photographs.

Photo #1, October 6th 2011;

Just starting the Gong Stand for the Zen Centre, am going to post some photos of the various stages of its construction. Here the pieces of Western Maple, 2” and 3” thick have been roughly cut to size, these will be left in the shop for a month or so to season a bit more. The moisture content was 10% on the outside and the cut centre of the 3″  was 14%, previously the wood had been air dried for 4 years. In the photo the pieces have been laid out in their approximate positions, the cross pieces are going to be morticed througth the uprights and pegged, the abbot wanted the stand to be dismantled if it needs to be moved. The base will have lap-joints and some knockdown bolts for the uprights. I have been keeping the ideas of Shibusa (see the book review ‘Japanese Arts…’) and honouring the material as the guiding design elements.

Photo#2

January 2nd, 2012.

The wood is fully seasoned  and all the joints are now cut, all it needs is some bandsaw work on the feet and the pegs. These are going to be made from Pacific Yew, its  dark rich colours will go well with the lighter colured Maple.

Photo #3  January 9th 2012

Below are some photos of the finished stand with the gong at the Zen Centre. It comes apart fairly easily with bolts on the underside that release the posts and the wedges easily knock out. The stand is very stable which it needs to be, the gongs quite heavy, about 30 pounds. The Abbot Eshu Martin said that its been a ‘big hit with the community’ . Finished with Tung oil

Chapter Six, The way of Pottery, Beauty is in the Abdomen.

On my reading on craft I have found a lot of interesting writing around the practice of ceramics and pottery. There does seem to be alot more written on this than other crafts, not in the technical sense of how too, but on a back story of why, its place in culture and the development of individual practice. This has  maybe developed in pottery as it is seen as being more ‘artistic’ than other crafts and therefore more has been written about the artistic process.  Pottery has been lifted above other crafts from being more easily removed from usury, is it also more impractical or is it not attached, like woodworking to so many trades and jobs where it becomes dissolved and therefore less rarefied!

I relate to a lot that is written on pottery and as a woodworker there are many similarities so for the sake of furthering my reading I have been swapping the word pottery for woodwork and a whole field of interesting ideas opens up. Talking about wood in the same way as clay is talked about!

Carters six chapters of his book focus on the various practices in Japan that embody the idea of ‘do’ or ‘way’ a practice that leads one on a path of self discovery, and include Aikido, the Tea Ceremony and Pottery.

The history of craft and the its tradition within Japan also seem relevant, as Japan has, arguably a more intact tradition of craft and there is an appreciation and literature to support it. It is unlike my background in England where the craftsman/artisan as a form of common employment was mostly destroyed by the Industrial revolution in the early 19th century.

In the chapter on pottery he focuses mainly on two Japanese potters Shoji Hamada and Yanagi Soetsu and their ideas of ‘intution’ in the craftsmen process, a place ‘ independent of, if not prior to thinking ‘. They both saw beauty in certain utilitarian objects, 19th century hand made tea bowls become through the almost unconscious perfection of the craftsmen who made them a high form of art, one where the ego was absent.

The bowls express something the Zen buddhists talk of, a state of awareness that is ‘ non dualistic….no past or future, ugly or beauty, good or evil ‘. Here the potters emphasis the idea of Tariki or other power which is different from the Zen focus on Jiriki or self power. The art comes not from wilful intent but the ‘ spontaneous unfolding of a style that has no intent or pretense ‘. There is a unity of body and mind something beyond ‘ technical know-how or intellectual brilliance ‘. Hamada felt this,  ‘ beauty is not in the head or the heart but in the abdomen ‘.

Shibusa a word that is in everyday use in Japan describes this aesthetic, Yamagi suggests English words to try and define it as, ‘ Austere-subdued-restrained- quietness-depth- simplicity-purity-unobtrusive ‘.

Hamada in his life as a craftsman wanted to make things that were not ‘ acceptable from the stand point of the usual idea of beauty… but  aiming at making correct and healthy things…. pottery that is practical and not forced that responds to the nature of the materials, …. he did not want to make something outwardly beautiful, but to begin from the inside……I simply look at the pot and ask it what it wants ‘.

One of the reasons I read this book was for some ideas for a recent commision of a Gong Stand for the meditation hall of the  Victoria Zen Centre. I was wanting it to reflect a tradition, I have a name for it now, Shibusa, but I also wanted to ‘ respond to the nature of the materials ‘ and  the unavoidable influence of the natural world here. And bee able to combine them,I recently  purchased the wood, Western Maple, which coincidently had come from a tree, fallen by BC Hydro from just down the road from the Zen Centre in East Sooke, it has interesting potential. Im going to try and post some pictures of the process of putting this together to see if I can honour these two distinct but complimentry elements.

This is a great article on craft, where Paz who saw himself  mainly as a poet writes clearly and insightful on the layers of human experience and history that create craft. In his position towards craft the influences of his political experiences, he was a committed socialist and a supporter of the Spanish Republic during the Civil War, are evident. Craft as being of the people!

There are several themes he explores around this, the human touch in craft, which ‘bears the fingerprints , real or metaphorical of the person who fashioned it’. This he contrasts with industrial design which operates under a ‘mathematical ideal’ which works to exclude the human and make design invisible.

For the craft object it has existed before there was a ‘separation of the beautiful and the useful’. An example for me here on the West Coast is how the First Nations peoples incorporate utilitarian objects with complex design and ornamentation.

He sees in these objects a movement that is continuously ‘back and forth between  both beauty and usefulness’. This flow of almost contradictory elements he sees as giving us ‘pleasure’. Where art is about beauty it is also static, locked away too idealised to touch a more removed conceptual experience. Craft pleases us because of its close physical presence that manages to combine both beauty and utility within the human imagination.

‘ Modern technology has brought about a great many profound transformations, but all in the same direction and with the same import: the expiration of the other. By leaving the aggressiveness of the human species intact and by making its members uniform, it has lent added strength to the causes tending towards its extinction’

Craft he sees goes against the grand designs of modern technology, the colloquial and regional nature of craft celebrates diversity, ‘craftsmen have no country, they are from the village’. My experience of working in wood work originally came from wanting to honour and connect with the great forests that are here on Vancouver Island. It has given me opportunities to express my surroundings and also it has taught me alot about myself.

The relationship of the craftsman to his workshop Paz sees as a possible model of a political relationship with the world, ‘its lack of perfection points to how we might humanize our society’.  In the practice of  craft with its  attempts at taking theory and creating something in the material world there are countless ways that unknowns can take things out of our hands. From these experiences can we appreciate the complexity and breadth of human experience and the poverty of uniform systems, political or otherwise!

Craft he argues has a timelessness to it, existing beyond history and can teach us to ‘ be wary of the mirages of history and the illusions of the future’. This reminds me of some of Crawfords argument in ‘Shop craft as soul craft’, which is reviewed elsewhere on this blog, his argument of craft helping us to be critical of advertising because it deals materially with things and not just with spin.

On the whole Paz is arguing for an awareness of our surroundings and the things that give us pleasure, craft ‘follows the course of time it flows along with us…..the pulse of human time…an object that endures through time yet meets its end and resigns itself to so doing’. And by making us aware of time passing and the craft object being loved and used and deteriorating,  ‘craft work teaches us to die and by so doing teaches us to live’.

I appreciated this essay as it looks deeply in to something so practical and finds such meaning, his last points about the timelessness of craft made me think of the development and appreciation of my craft which grows brighter and stronger against the passage of time.