Marcus Sly - Furniture Making and Design

Are you the sort of person who likes things that are handmade, and appreciates objects with age and character rather than the latest shiny gizmo? Do you prefer space to clutter, enjoy the patina on an aged bronze statue, and find pleasure in the natural world? If so then you may have a feeling for “wabi-sabi”.

Wabi-sabi is an aesthetic that grew up around the appreciation of the imperfect and impermanent in Japan over several centuries. It’s to do with accepting the impermanence of life and enjoying it - finding beauty in nature and in things that are old, imperfect or unpretentious. It’s deeply linked to Zen Buddhism and, like Zen, defies easy definitions. In fact it may be that - like love or happiness - the moment we try to pin wabi-sabi down we have already lost it!

The cherished oak table that shows the scars of generations of use, a stone path with the autumn leaves swept neatly to each side, an uncluttered room with traditionally plastered walls with their subtle imperfections – things such as these may express wabi-sabi. Wabi-sabi is the opposite of the hard, too perfect, unyielding forms that come from mass production. A wabi-sabi house is full of life – the sort of place where we walk in and feels immediately at home, because we sense that we are surrounded by things that are real, have a history, and mean something more to people than the latest fad.

Opening the Door to Wabi-sabi

Trying to make wabi-sabi happen is a contradiction – it’s a natural unforced thing! However we can open the door to it, starting with little things – clearing space, selling things we thought we needed but which have ended up just taking up space on ebay - or giving them away; reminding ourselves of the things we own which mean the most to us; opening a window in the evening to hear the wind in the trees and the birds sing. Little steps like this can help us reclaim the space we live and re-humanise our lives and homes.

When I’m making a piece of furniture I’m mindful of wabi-sabi – wanting to work with the way wood “is” rather than force it into shapes I’ve imagined but which don’t honour the material. I find that using hand tools is a wonderful way to gain a feeling for the timber and to shape it in a way that gives it a living presence, rather than the “dead” flat, lifeless surface left by industrial machinery.

I think that it’s a sad indictment of the of modern production methods that the things it produces look uglier as they get older! Have you ever noticed how a wooden boat looks beautiful even when it’s abandoned and falling to pieces on a forgotten mooring? As a culture we seem to have lost the art of making things that age well. Our justification is that things will be thrown away, so it doesn’t matter. But we are waking up to the fact that it matters very much.

I sense that, whether or not we call it by that name, there is a growing hunger for Wabi-Sabi in the West. More of us are realising that the hard, unyielding, superficially exciting, things which our culture surrounds us with are not good for us. They don’t feed our souls or our imaginations, and perhaps, if we’re not careful, are liable to pass on to us some of their hard indifference to others and the natural world. In wabi-sabi we can find some pointers towards a more gentle and care-full way to live on the earth.

You may also be interested in reading:

The Wabi-Sabi House by Robyn Griggs Lawrence (recommended)

Wabi-Sabi for Artists, Designers, Poets and Philosophers by Leaonard Koren