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Wabi-Sabi woodworking
Wabi-sabi is a Japanese aesthetic philosophy that strives to find beauty in the imperfect nature of life.
It’s about appreciating the natural cycle of growth and decay, as well as acknowledging that perfection isn’t organic in any way.
Among many other forms, wabi-sabi can be found in sewing, landscape, décor, pottery and, of course, woodworking and furniture making. Really, it can be found in just about any aspect of our designed surroundings, if you look for it. Having said that, sometimes you have to look much harder than other times. If you find yourself in the middle of a downtown city, surrounded by straight roads, giant concrete buildings and sophisticated vehicles, you may have to search very carefully to find an object with even a small amount of wabi-sabi in it. I’d look towards art sculptures or landscaped gardens near some of the big buildings. If you look a little harder, you might find wabi-sabi in some of the concert flyers posted on light standards near intersections.
I find wabi-sabi comforting. For example, a simple bouquet of fresh picked flowers is lively and colourful. Certainly not perfect, as the shapes and colours all have natural variation in them. None of stems are straight (or even follow a perfect arc) and none are the same size.
As those flowers sit in a vase in your home, the level of wabi-sabi increases and becomes more obvious. My wife almost always throws bouquets out much earlier than I would. She sees decay and lack of colour (and yes, maybe a few bugs buzzing around) while I see an interesting change taking place. The shapes of the flowers become even more dramatic, as each flower bends over and reaches towards the table. The colours, while less bold, become more nuanced. The entire feeling has changed. It would be natural to see this feeling as a sad one, but I mainly just try to enjoy the changes that happen to the flowers, and appreciate that process.
To be clear, nobody is wrong in either case, and neither view is better than the other. I think we just see things slightly differently and I’m okay with that. I’m sure she’s relatively fine with it, too, even if bugs do tend to gather around the flowers as they fade.
Wabi-sabi woodworking
I’ve often wanted to bring more wabi-sabi into my furniture making, but it’s not easy. I was taught to strive for joints that fit together without imperfections, a perfectly sanded surface and a finish that resembles a mirror. It goes against all of my training to leave imperfections in a piece.
That said, I love the look of textured wood and have made many pieces with a textured surface. I think adding texture is very much along the lines of bringing wabi-sabi into my work. The texture I typically add is made by hand, not machine. Carving gouges are my favourite approach, though I use many other methods. Even if I do use a machine (a rotary tool or a power carving cutter, for example) I use my hands to guide the tool, rather than use a strict, methodical approach to leaving the texture on my work. It’s still very imperfect.
And when I show clients textured pieces, they always reach to touch the texture first, rather than the perfectly fitting joint, the nicely sanded surface or the mirror finish. I think this is, at least in part, because of the imperfect wabi-sabi effect.
Antiques
Many antiques were made with machines, so they often have flat, machined surfaces. They also have turnings that are all virtually identical and details that are uniform. The one thing antiques have that many other newer pieces of furniture don’t is natural wear and tear. Some people see “damage”, though I think that’s part of what antique collectors like to see in the pieces they search for. It may not increase the value of the piece, but it will likely give the piece more authenticity and character. This is similar to barn board. If it were all smooth and unweathered it wouldn’t be sought after. This is, essentially, a small example of the wabi-sabi effect.
Other furniture approaches
For over a decade I’ve wanted to make a piece that has no flat surfaces. Even if the workpiece went through a planer, over a jointer or past a table saw blade, the surface would have been hand-altered to not be perfectly smooth or even. This could be done with carving gouges or power carving equipment, though it could also be done with a spokeshave or hand plane. Sort of a like the surface of a large hewn beam of a large wooden structure that’s been shaped with an adze. From afar, it’s flat, but get a bit closer and you can clearly see a thousand adze cuts have formed the surface and none of the cuts were exactly the same. The cuts are all different sizes, shapes or depths. It’s hard not to reach out and run your hand over a support beam in an old building with this sort of texture on it, is it?
One of these days I’ll bring that sort of an approach to a piece I make, but for now I’ll just dream. I’ll dream of the imperfect surface with a pattern, yet no true repetition to that pattern. I’ll dream of how tempting it will be for everyone who sees the piece to run their hands along the surface. I’ll also dream of all the dirt, wear and scratches that everyone touching it will impart, yet all of this will only add to the look and feel of the piece, increasing the level of wabi-sabi in it.
Until then, I’ll just have to keep my wife away from the flowers on the kitchen table that I picked a week ago, as they’re just starting to come into their own.
Growing More Beautiful
I picked these flowers earlier in the summer, about a week before I took this photo. To me, they're beautiful. To others, it's time to pitch them over the backyard fence.
Rob Brown - rbrown@canadianwoodworking.com
Rob is the editor at Canadian Woodworking & Home Improvement and a studio furniture maker.
