People
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NY Times on Shou Sugi Ban: Black Magic
The Latest Design Trend: Black and Burned Wood… An ancient Japanese technique protects cedar by charring it a witchy charcoal. It’s having a renaissance in the West (for less practical reasons). On the windswept southern side of Martha’s Vineyard, at the end of a rural road that emerges from a dark copse of oak trees, sit two austere, inky-black farmhouse-style buildings — a studio and a private residence — that compose Chilmark House. Designed by the New Haven, Conn., firm Gray Organschi Architecture with Aaron Schiller, founder of the New York City-based Schiller Projects, the home, which was built for Schiller’s family, is clad in approximately 80 charred louvers he torched entirely by…
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A Visual Meditation on Shou Sugi Ban
Many of you will enjoy this beautiful mediation on Japanese technique of preserving and antiquing wood through charring with fire called shou-sugi-ban 焼き杉. Note that the oil used for final finish of the charred boards is plain tung oil.
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DIY Shou Sugi Ban on HGTV
Another Kitchen Cousins DIY project but this one has an international twist. Here the HGTV remodel show explains a more modern version of the traditional Shou Sugi Ban technique. Anthony learned this very ancient art while studying in Japan. See this ancient art at its best!
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Fujimori’s Shou Sugi Ban Technique
From Austrian TV, watch a interesting newscast segment during which renowned Japanese architect Terunobu Fujimori demonstrates the Shou Sugi Ban (also known as yakisugi in Japan) technique in his architecture workshop.
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Shou ‘Piney’ Ban: Finishing Southern Pine with Fire
Since 2004, Michael Moran, and now his partner Celia Gibson, can be found, chisel in hand, building each unique object one piece at a time, one hand-cut joint at a time, watching wood become a functional work of art. Moran says his vision is one in which materials, primarily wood, and its natural characteristics are central. Taking these characteristics into consideration, our intention is to place each individual board and its idiosyncrasies into a context where it is best expressed aesthetically, ideologically and functionally. “Since we’ve been working with charring pine, we make sure to not refer to it as Shou Sugi Ban (the name inherently implies the use of…
