Wabi-sabi gives name to a beauty possessed in certain objects, certain light, in dead leaves on the sidewalk, in rawness, tactility, imperfection, in the scars and cracks and rust and fade, in the signs of time and use. This beauty draws out a quiet aliveness, a melancholy mixed with a breathy euphoria. For me, November embodies it. I learned about wabi-sabi in advance of a trip to Japan last winter. Leonard Koren defines it this way: “a beauty of things imperfect, impermanent, and incomplete.”
I finished another table for my brother Sam this morning. The wood comes from my grandmother’s house, which no longer belongs to my grandmother, from a tree as old as three hundred years. You can see the age, in the knots and cracks and width, feel it when you put your palm down on it. The raw steel legs will begin to rust within the year.