Analogue Life

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Sugi Kuzu Bin / dia 20.5cm x h30cm / unfinished cedar

Masaru Kawai produces the eight sided cedar dust bin for his SOMA line of wood furniture and utensils. Concerned with the current situation where the majority of wood used in Japan, (a country that is 70% forest ) are imports, Kawai-san started his SOMA project to promote the use of native Japanese woods and the country’s historical wood culture.

Masaru Kawai
Born in Gifu in 1979 into an agricultural family, Masaru Kawai spent his youth running running around the local mountains and forests and playing in his relatives timber yard and workshop. After graduating with an architecture major from Kyoto Seika University in 2001, Kawai undertook woodworking training in Hida (a region in Northern Gifu, rich in hardwoods and well known for its timber furniture) and apprenticed with a furniture maker in Kyoto. He later established his own independent workshop in 2007 and his SOMA brand in 2016. Kawai uses locally sourced Japanese timbers and through his work and his activities he advocates for a 'culture in which we live together with the forest'