Australian Wood Review – June 2017

44 Australian Wood Review

PROFILE

L

ife altering moments aren’t

always pleasant, in fact times of

suffering can often teach us more. For

fine woodworker Shinobu Kobayashi,

34 it was a slip with a razor sharp

chisel that not only severed three

tendons in his arm, but totally

changed his outlook on life.

By the time his partner got him to

casualty he was almost unconscious

from blood loss. Two days later he

was home after surgery but then

calamity truly struck. Shin’s family

home in Japan was destroyed in the

2011 tsunami, and the trials of his

own injury were compounded

with an overwhelming

disappointment and sense

of failure at being unable to

help out back home with

‘just one left arm’. But let’s

step back a bit.

Shin came to Australia from Japan

when he was 17. He thought that

studying graphic and industrial design

in a native English environment

would open more doors, and so

enrolled at Central TAFE in Western

Australia. Afterwards he moved to

Melbourne and for five years worked

for a furniture maker, and planned

to later start his own business. It

was at this juncture, while making a

workbench for his small garage space,

that the accident and his rethinking

of life happened.

‘I asked myself how I could relate to

people through woodworking

and craft, rather than

just making money

by building timber

furniture’, said

Shin. ‘I realised my

hand skills needed

to improve and that

I needed to learn

more from

others. With

many people

now choosing hi tech technologies,

traditional culture and techniques are

being lost. From my injury and seeing

the disaster in Japan, I also saw that

we never know when we will die, it

could be in 50 years, or tomorrow.

I wanted to be someone who would

pass old traditions and culture onto

to the next generation. My dream was

to travel around the world, talking

to local people, and watching and

touching their culture and history.

I wanted to feel their art and design

with all my five senses, and then share

to as many people as possible.’

A year after the accident, Shin started

attending classes at the Melbourne

Guild of Fine Woodworking,

learning from Alistair Boell, a

graduate of the North Bennet Street

School in USA that specialies in

teaching traditional skills.

Following this, from 2013, Shin

became a modern day journeyman,

studying first at Capellagården in

Sweden, founded by Carl Malmsten

who was known to be one of James

Krenov’s teachers. Capellagården’s

live-in three year course appealed

because not only had he been

By My Five Senses

Shinobu Kobayashi’s Tabibito box, exhibited recently in Denmark, tells

the story of bridging cultures and his own journey to learn traditional skills.

Story by Linda Nathan.