Schools of Carpentry
Though there is a core practice shared by all Japanese carpenters, defined by a vocabulary of tools and joints and a methodology of working, a carpenter will typically identify with one of four distinct carpentry professions. Miyadaiku 宮大工 practice the construction of Japanese shrines and temples, and are renowned for their use of elaborate wooden joints and the fact that the buildings they construct are frequently found among the world's longest surviving wooden structures. Teahouse and residential carpenters, known as sukiya-daiku 数奇屋大工, are famed for their delicate aesthetic constructions using rustic materials. Furniture makers are known as sashimono-shi 指し物師, and interior finishing carpenters, who build shōji 障子 and ranma 欄間, are termed tateguya 建具屋.
Though it is rare to find a sashimono-shi or tateguya practising outside of their field, it is not uncommon for a carpentry workshop to work simultaneously as both miyadaiku and sukiyadaiku.
Read more about this topic: Japanese Carpentry
Famous quotes containing the word schools:
“In America the taint of sectarianism lies broad upon the land. Not content with acknowledging the supremacy as the Diety, and with erecting temples in his honor, where all can bow down with reverence, the pride and vanity of human reason enter into and pollute our worship, and the houses that should be of God and for God, alone, where he is to be honored with submissive faith, are too often merely schools of metaphysical and useless distinctions. The nation is sectarian, rather than Christian.”
—James Fenimore Cooper (1789–1851)