Visit to Japanese wood joinery master

I was very lucky to join the FabLab Kamakura team to a visit of traditional Japanese wood joint master Wadako Gei. He has developed an educational joint chair that consists of more than 30 unique wood joints. These joints come from hundreds of years of architecture tradition in Japan,

Some joints with pins are designed so that in an earthquake, only the locking pins would break and can easily be replaced. Some beams where divided intosections so that the parts that are known to be exposed to rot, can be replaced with little effort.

We were invited to first disassemble the chair, and then reassembled the chair from memory. No easy task, but very learningfull.

The chair is for sale to anybody with deep pockets and a love for wood joints. More info here.

The chair in pieces

Almost reassembled

Came over these metal joins in a hardware store. A cheap, fast and easy way to replace skill demanding joinery. I wonder if makers would have been as excited about these 500 years ago, as we are about traditional wood joints today?