“What you get is something akin to the firmness, the relative resilience, of Sanuki udon”.
It was these words uttered by Naoto Fukasawa in conversation that inspired me. He explained in very
easy terms that it wasn’t 100% adherence to the desires of the designer that made for truly good products,
but the incorporation of knowledge and ideas based on the experiences of echnical experts. With Naoto
Fukasawa, we enter into the challenge of creating a “decorative product tandard”, a “chair that
transcends the Y chair”.
I had always wanted to design a good wooden chair. I believed what would be good was one whose essence seeped into our daily lives as it was used over time. With Northern European plain wood, which until now has been the world standard for wooden chairs, for example, what is present is the warmth that one gets from handcrafted objects, rather than “design”. There is a similar kind of artistic crafted element to Japanese wooden products; with uncoated objects made of Japanese cypress in particular, there is a subtle, exalted feeling of freshness, one that disallows any kind of impurity. What was aimed at with this chair and table was an image that was clean and subtle, while still having a human warmth to it.
Designing a wooden chair is not easy. I believe that it is not just about the shape of the chair; it’s something that is realized with a high degree of craftsmanship and a great deal of experience with respect to structural ingenuity, where the quality of the wood is assessed and the robustness of the structure is balanced with lightness in terms of its weight, while further ensuring that it is comfortable to sit on.
My encounter with Maruni translated this belief into reality. Since its beginning in 1928 in Hiroshima, Maruni, with its slogan of “industrializing craftwork”, has succeeded in its endeavors to utilize the kind of complicated techniques that had only been possible with handcrafted products with industrial products, turning out a great deal of high quality wooden furniture.
For its 2008 collection, Maruni is announcing the HIROSHIMA series of dining chairs and tables, which employs unpainted beech and oak with natural wooden finishes, and the Traditional series, which refines the Mediterranean series and the Versailles series that became European home furnishing best sellers in the 1980s.