In 2013, the Harvard Graduate School of Design received a large donation of antique Japanese woodworking tools from the Takenaka Corporation, extending the decades-long collaboration between the school and this major Japanese architecture, construction and development firm. A collaboration formed between the GSD and the Reischauer Institute of Japanese Studies to develop an exhibition of these incedible artifacts. Myself and a small crew of other students under the guidance of professor Mark Mulligan designed, fabricated and installed the entire exhibition over the course of the fall semester.
We decided that a display of the tools alone would not be sufficient to explain their full story. Instead, we tell the story of the forming of wood into architecture through all stages of its existence, from the harvesting of raw lumber, raw shaping, finer planing, transformation into discrete joints, and assembly into a finished building - exhibited with the tools necessary for each step. Five interpretive areas walk the visitor through this process. The first holds four species of rough sawn timbers native to Japan and fresh cut shavings of each for visitors to smell. The second contains rip saws and cross cut saws necessary for rough shaping. The third shows examples of rough to finished planing, forming the wood into its final dimensions, along with the suite of adzes and planes. The fourth shows examples of traditional joinery such as mortise and tenons, scarf joints and column connections that form the basis of Japanese buildings, and the required finer tools such as chisels and rulers. The fifth shows two finely detailed scale models of traditional Japanese construction and a full scale tea house.
Each display unit has two sides - one, a low table showing examples of planed wood or joinery (things means to be handled), and the other side, a custom built cedar lightbox case protecting the tools. I personally designed the cabinetry and built all of the cedar tool display cases, and assisted with the exhibition installation. The entire design process was transformative to the ways in which I understood the relationship of raw materials and a finished design product, a direct appreciation for the history, craftsmanship and potential of these artifacts. The name of the exhibition sums up its premise perfectly - The Thinking Hand - the ability to gain intellectual insight through the direct physical use of tools.
