Wabi sabi can be beautifully expressed in wood. It can be part of the wood’s natural growth and formation, and it can be discovered and brought to focus by a craftsman, or it can be added to the project by the craftsman.

Here in Grayson County, we live surrounded by forests and close to saw mills that utilize the wood from those forests. Here, I’ve gotten to know loggers, and I’ve learned that the logging industry wants straight-grained, tall trees that don’t have branches or crotches or “character.”

They send the logs to the mills and they saw them into identical boards and the boards go to furniture factories where they’re cut, glued and stapled into a mass of identical pieces.