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wabi-sabi

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  • Scraps of the brocade of autumn

    There is a story of Rikyu which well illustrates the ideas of cleanliness entertained by the tea masters. Rikyu was watching his son Shoan as he swept and watered the garden path. "Not clean enough," said Rikyu, when Shoan had finished his task, and bade him try again. After a weary hour the son turned to Rikyu: "Father, there is nothing more to be done. The steps have been washed for the third time, the stone lanterns and the trees are well sprinkled with water, moss and lichens are shining with a fresh verdure; not a twig, not a leaf have I left on the ground"

    "Young fool," chided the tea master, "that is not the way a garden path should be swept. "Saying this, Rikyu stepped into the garden, shook a tree and scattered over the garden gold and crimson leaves, scraps of the brocade of autumn! What Rikvu demanded was not cleanliness alone, but the beautiful and the natural also.

    Okakura Kakuzō, The Book of Tea
    1. ​​In a state of reverberation​​
    • wabi-sabi
  • The most incidental detail

    IMG_6227.jpg

    Black rakuware tea bowl (late sixteenth century), Kyoto, Japan. Freer Sackler Museum of Asian Art.

    For Irwin, the lesson of [the raku tea cups] was twofold: first, their presentation was important, insofar as the ceremony involved a gradual preparation of the audience's aesthetic attention. Then, when the time came to handle the cups, the intimacy of the experience fused visual and tactile sensations into a single continuum. As he also noted:

    he would set on the table this box with a beautiful little tie on it – very Japanese – and you untied it, you opened up the box, he let you do that. And then inside of it was a cloth sack. You took the sack out, and it had a drawstring, and you opened up the drawstring and you reached inside and took out the bowl. By that time, the bowl had you at a level where the most incidental detail – maybe even just a thumb mark – registered as a powerful statement.

    Robert Irwin, Robert Irwin: A Conditional Art
    • zen
    • wabi-sabi
    • ritual
    • tea
    • attention
  • Bells

    Most Japanese bells when hung still have on them one or more rough lines obviously arising in horizontal mold joints. These lines are not removed in fettling the bell, and they seem to be regarded not as defects but rather as a reminder of the reality of the founder’s interaction with his materials. One is reminded of the ceramics that are most treasured in Japan which usually have some unexpected tool marks or irregularity resulting from a kiln mishap.

    Cyril Stanley Smith, A Search for Structure
    1. ​​Chapel of St. Ignatius, Seattle, 1995–7​​
    • flaws
    • wabi-sabi
  • Roughness

    Roughness is the odd shape, the quick brush stroke, the irregular column size or spacing, the change in pattern at the corner – it is adjusting to conditions as they present themselves with meaning, but without ego or contrived deliberation.

    Though it may look superficially flawed, especially with human perception accustomed to mass-produced regularity and perfection as a goal, an object with roughness is often more precise because it comes about from paying attention to what matters most, and letting go of what matters less.

    Christopher Alexander, The Nature of Order
    • flaws
    • wabi-sabi
  • Wabi-sabi

    Sabi is an aesthetic term, rooted in a given concern. It is concerned with chronology, with time and its effects, with product.

    Wabi is a more philosophical concept, a quality not attached merely to a given object. It is concerned with manner, with process, with direction.

    Donald Richie, A Tractate on Japanese Aesthetics
    • wabi-sabi
  • Optical Glass House

    A Building by Hiroshi Nakamura
    www.archdaily.com
    Image from www.archdaily.com on 2020-08-16 at 2.15.55 PM.jpeg

    A façade of some 6,000 pure-glass blocks (50mm x 235mm x 50mm) was employed. The pure-glass blocks, with their large mass-per-unit area, effectively shut out sound and enable the creation of an open, clearly articulated garden that admits the city scenery. To realize such a façade, glass casting was employed to produce glass of extremely high transparency from borosilicate, the raw material for optical glass. The casting process was exceedingly difficult, for it required both slow cooling to remove residual stress from within the glass, and high dimensional accuracy. Even then, however, the glass retained micro-level surface asperities, but we actively welcomed this effect, for it would produce unexpected optical illusions in the interior space.

    • wabi-sabi
  • How the light gets in

    A Quote by Leonard Cohen

    There is a crack in everything.
    That's how the light gets in.

    • flaws
    • light
    • beauty
    • wabi-sabi
    • repair
  • Is perfection boring?

    An Article by Ralph Ammer
    ralphammer.com
    Image from ralphammer.com on 2020-07-27 at 5.09.09 PM.jpeg

    We love to see the process, not just the result. The imperfections in your work can be beautiful if they show your struggle for perfection, not a lack of care.

    • zen
    • perfection
    • mistakes
    • wabi-sabi
    • imperfections

See also:
  1. flaws
  2. zen
  3. perfection
  4. mistakes
  5. imperfections
  6. light
  7. beauty
  8. repair
  9. ritual
  10. tea
  11. attention
  1. Hiroshi Nakamura
  2. Ralph Ammer
  3. Leonard Cohen
  4. Donald Richie
  5. Christopher Alexander
  6. Cyril Stanley Smith
  7. Robert Irwin
  8. Okakura Kakuzō