わが家には芦別の木工場に自然乾燥させられていたナラ無垢材から長い時間を掛けて造作してもらったテーブルがある。わが家にその木が来てからもう25年以上経過している。四半世紀。
はじめはとにかく「暴れ者」で参っていた。一応、切りだしてから数年間はその木工場で自然乾燥されていたので、ある程度は「ねじれ」「反り」などは緩和されているものと思っていた。そして軽く200kgくらいはあるので５人がかりで家の中に搬入した。
そこから数年間、ブロックの足をかませて「その家の空気に馴染ませて乾燥させる」という忠告通りにしていたのだけれど、材の各所からねじれ・反りが大暴走していた。それがようやく一段落した頃にようやくテーブル家具として「仕上げて」もらったけれど、なかなか素直にはなってくれなかった。
いまも多少「いびつ」な部分も遺しながら、壁のブロックや外壁の煉瓦などとともに、わが家の空気感の重要部分を担ってくれている。居間にたどりついたとき、その木目や質感が「おう、よく帰ってきたな」みたいな様子で、馴染ませてくれる。
そんなことで外を歩いているときにも、木の表情を見せている家具類にはちょっと深入りするような心理が働いて、じっと様子を観察していたりする。もちろんわが家のテーブルのように自己主張は強くなく、それなりに「馴致」されている様子が伝わってくるけれど、やはり木の本然として「生きている」という様子は伝わってくる。
こちらの写真のベンチは、表情についてはその木目をごらんください、ということで機能性一択に特化して足も確認することができなかった。たぶん背面の木部に対して金物接続させているのだろうが、人間と木目だけの「対話の仕掛け」として好もしかった。
毎日、木目と話しているタイプの人間としては、共感が湧いてくるのだ。
「まぁちょっと、坐っていけや」「ああ、でも道を急ぐし」「安全運転には休養第一だぞ」
みたいな会話を勝手に脳内で通わせている。結局数分間、木目に抱かれている。スマホチェックの一時だけれど、句読点にはなってくれる。ありがとよ、と別れるけれど、家に戻ってくるとそういう写真に強く惹かれている自分を再発見する。
English version⬇
A long wooden couch in a highway parking lot.
Wooden furniture has a psychological “dialogue” with the user. The wooden furniture relaxes the mind when it says, “Well, sit down,” or “But I'm in a bit of a hurry. It also interacts with a photograph. The photograph also interacts with it.
We have a table in our house, which was built over a long period of time from solid oak that was left to dry naturally at a woodworking shop in Ashibetsu. It has been more than 25 years since the wood came to our house. A quarter of a century.
In the beginning, it was a “rambunctious” tree. I thought that the wood had been dried naturally for a few years after it was cut, so I thought that the “twisting” and “warping” had been mitigated to some extent. And since it weighed about 200 kg lightly, it took five people to carry it into the house.
For a few years, we followed the advice to let the wood air-dry in the house by putting block feet over it, but the twisting and warping was rampant from all parts of the timber. When that finally came to an end, I finally had it “finished” as table furniture, but it didn't quite straighten out.
Even now, it still retains some “distorted” parts, but together with the blocks on the walls and the bricks on the exterior walls, it plays an important part in the atmosphere of our house. When you arrive at the living room, the grain and texture of the wood make you feel at home, as if to say, “Hey, you've come home.
When I am walking around outside, I tend to look closely at the furniture that shows the expression of wood, and I feel as if I am getting a little bit deeper into it. Of course, it is not as assertive as the table in my home, and you can tell that it has “adjusted” to its surroundings in its own way, but you can still feel that the wood is “alive” in its own right.
As for the bench in the photo here, I could not check the legs because I was focused on the functionality of the bench, so please look at the grain of the wood. The bench is probably connected to the wood on the back with metal hardware, but I liked it as a “device for dialogue” between human beings and the grain of the wood.
As someone who talks with the grain of the wood every day, I felt a sense of empathy.
I could hear conversations like, “Well, you should sit down for a while,” “Yeah, but I'm in a hurry,” or “You need to rest first for safe driving.
I let my brain go through conversations like these on its own. In the end, I am held by the grain of the tree for a few minutes. It's just a moment to check my phone, but it serves as a punctuation mark. I say, “Thanks,” and we part ways, but when I return home, I rediscover that I am strongly attracted to such pictures.
