TEA LEAVES Wabi-Sabi By Dale Dougherty
Do you have a favorite cup or pen or T-shirt? of use and misuse ... They still possess an undimin-
Why do you like it so much? I have a favorite coffee ished poise and strength of character.” In Volume 02
mug that’s at least 30 years old. It’s a ceramic mug of MAKE (see page 50), Joe Grand showed us how
with a few nicks in the handle and it bears the call to put a new computer inside the well-worn case of
letters of a public radio station, which sent it to me an Atari console. I must admit that I wondered why
as part of a membership drive. I cannot explain why someone would really want to go to all that trouble.
I like to use that particular mug first thing in the Now, Wabi-Sabi helps me understand why Joe trea-
morning. To be honest, I never really thought about sures his old Atari system.
it until I returned from a trip to Japan earlier this year. Bob Dylan, in his book Chronicles, Volume One,
On my trip, I picked up a small book called Wabi- says that when he was asked early in his career
Sabi for Artists, Designers, Poets and Philosophers, what kind of music he played, he answered, “folk
written and published by a San Franciscan, Leonard music.” When he was then asked to describe folk
Koren. He defines Wabi-Sabi as “the Zen of things.” music, he answered that “it was handed-down
Koren writes that Wabi-Sabi “is a beauty of things songs.” He started out learning this music and only
imperfect, impermanent, and incomplete. It is a later did he decide to make his own kind of music.
beauty of things modest and humble. It is a beauty
of things unconventional.” Originally, Wabi referred “One insight of Wabi-Sabi is that objects
to “the misery of living alone in nature” and Sabi gain value by being used.”
meant “lean” or “withered.” Over time, Wabi-Sabi
came to mean an appreciation of the simple things Wabi-Sabi challenges conventional notions of
in life. It seems akin to the way the word “organic” beauty — that what is new is better, that mass-
is now used. produced products are perfect. In fact, our experi-
In Japanese culture, Wabi-Sabi is wrapped in the ence is exactly opposite. Nothing is perfect. Nor
mystery and ritual of the tea ceremony. The ceremony are we. Large billboards in American cities this past
traditionally takes place in an outbuilding that is by summer featured large American women instead
no means elaborate; it’s more of a shed or a shack. of excessively slender supermodels, showing that
The ceramic bowls used to serve tea have been beauty comes in all shapes and sizes. Koren writes,
uniquely created for this use and they are often “Wabi-Sabi appeared the perfect antidote to the
passed down from one generation to the next. They pervasively slick, saccharine corporate style of
are rough-hewn, not polished. The tea ceremony, beauty that I felt was desensitizing American society.”
like a lot of what you see in Japan, is about taking Wabi-Sabi helps us identify something that is truly
something that we do regularly and making it into authentic, based on valuing our own experience.
an art form, a deeply considered experience. It’s When something becomes your favorite, you don’t
the difference between eating fast food on the run want to replace it with something new. The things
and enjoying a satisfying meal in the company of we make are more authentic than the things we buy.
friends or family. Our own knowledge and experience are reflected in
Wabi-Sabi defines an aesthetic sense of an object, what we have made. As Finnish crafter Ulla-Maaria
apart from its function. It’s a way of understanding Mutanen writes in the Manifesto that appears in this
why we are attracted to some things, what they issue (see page 7): “If you make something yourself,
mean to us, and how they make us feel. One insight you see part of yourself in that object. This is not
of Wabi-Sabi is that objects gain value by being possible in purchased products.” Making something
used. “They record the sun, wind, rain, heat, cold is a creative ritual, like the tea ceremony. We follow a
in a language of discoloration, rust, tarnish, stain, set of steps that have been handed down to us, but
warping, shrinking, shriveling, and cracking. Their what we end up with is all our own.
nicks, chips, bruises, scars, dents, peeling, and
other forms of attrition are a testament to histories Dale Dougherty is editor and publisher of MAKE.
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