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Master woodworker passes on his skills to acolytes
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IN the Maikejiang Creative Zone in Qibao Town, Taiwan carpentry master Huang Chun-chieh has opened a school to teach the artful side of woodworking skills.
The Lu Ban Craft Academy is named after the ancient Chinese carpenter, engineer and inventor Lu Ban (507-444 BC). Its goal is to endow a new generation with the spirit of the ancient master, whose work was renowned for its exquisite detail and artful innovation.
“In the flashy modern world, I hope that some young people will see carpentry as an art form, and learn it to pass on to future generations,” said Huang.
In the first session held at the academy, the assignment was to make a wooden desk lamp. First, Huang made one as an example. The pupils watched as his hands worked skillfully, his mind concentrated and his eyes pored over detail. The finished lamp was perfect in shape and its surface was as smooth as skin.
Born in 1957, Huang was fascinated by carpentry as a child and gifted as well. While in elementary school, he recalled the joy of watching a carpenter shaving a board, with the shavings curling up and falling to the floor. It’s an image indelibly etched in his mind.
At age of 16, when his family expected him to begin training to become a teacher, Huang secretly signed up for a vocational school course in carpentry in the city of Taitung. He was keenly aware that he needed to develop a marketable skill quickly in order to help his relatively poor family.
“The decision to enroll in vocational school was the only major time I didn’t listen to parents, but it all turned out well in the end,” he said.
St. Joseph Technical School played an essential role in Huang’s career. Established by the Swiss, the school recruited certificated technical staff from Germany, Switzerland and Austria as teachers.
The school gave Huang the advanced skills he needed. But more than that, it also inspired in him the desire to mentor students in woodworking. So he stayed on at the school as a teacher.
In his 30s, however, Huang started to become dissatisfied with his carpentry output. He realized that he didn’t understand wood thoroughly enough. Some of the furniture he built developed adhesive failures and other problems.
So at age 38, he enrolled in National Chiayi University to study forestry and related applications. After graduation, he spent another three years studying traditional colored paintings in architecture.
Education sanded off all the rough edges. Huang won numerous awards in Taiwan for his carpentry masterpieces and he was recruited as deputy professor for wood science and design at the National Pingtung University of Science and Technology.
In 2004, Huang met Yeh Thai-chin, creator of the renowned Yung Shing line of furniture. Huang and Yeh shared a common desire to spread knowledge about the use of traditional Chinese mortise-and-tenon joints in carpentry. By joining two pieces of wood with a mortise hole and a tenon tongue, there was no need for nails or screws.
The two men began a training class on Yung Shing Carpentry, later changing the name to the Lu Ban Academy.
“In the first course, we had only four pupils,” Huang said. “Now we have to set a limit of 20 pupils for each session. Carpentry requires energy, patience and attention to every pupil.”
In 2014, Huang opened the first mainland branch of the academy in Jiashan, Zhejiang Province. For the new branch in Minhang, he selected one of his best pupils, Huang Shang-jhih, as principal.
“I believe he will form a close, heart-to-heart relationship with his pupils in Minhang, just as I once formed with him,” said Huang.
There is an old saying that goes: “A mentor will starve once he teaches everything to his pupil.” In the past, many mentors held back some knowledge from their protégés and, in some cases, didn’t encourage students to be innovative.
Huang rejects such a mentor-pupil relationship.
“Mentors should always encourage pupils to be creative,” he said. “That’s where the true value of art lies.”
Everything at the academy is designed to bring out the best in pupils. For example, the school doesn’t use standard plane cutters, but rather teaches the students on tools that Huang has modified himself.
“Traditional cutters are too rough and not suitable for sophisticated woodworking,” Huang said. “I like to improve upon things that work for me.”
Huang said he also believes that Western concepts and techniques should be adopted when they can contribute to artistry. He uses machines and does accurate sketches of parts and structures, drawing on what he learned in college and from colleagues all over the world.
He said he relies on machines for 70 percent of the work and doesn’t feel that diminishes the value of the finished product.
Huang draws inspiration from all manner of artwork. Every week he likes to spend a day at the National Palace Museum in Taipei, looking at exhibits to ascertain the source of their charm and appeal. “My style is to combine theory, science, technology, art and experience,” he said. “And I think it works very well.”
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