If you’ve a yen for the yin-yang of form and function, the centered see-saw of joyful joinery and durable joinery, then a butterfly joint might meet your needs. And if you share my affinity — aesthetic and philosophical — for the perfect art of imperfection, the today’s patchwork post is for you.
Between wabi-sabi and the simple, symmetrical, and surprisingly strong butterfly joint is an enduring and ancient relationship. A woodworking technique where a bowtie-figured inlay (wood, stone, metal, etc) is inserted to conjoin two planks or to stabilize a crack and reduce additional splitting.
The conjugal caress
of craftsmanship
upon
the texture of time,
the beauty of blemish,
the sense of senescence,
inventing and reinventing
across
the arc of impermanence,
honoring and celebrating
the irregular
and natural
and flawed
and crude
and simple
Photographed nine years ago in the Ville-Marie neighborhood of Montréal are two among many of my wabi-sabi butterfly joint souvenirs.
Wear-and-tear… visible reminders of imperfection and impermanence. And yet beauty brims… [with] warmth and comfort and reassurance…[articles] invested… with memories and… bumps and bruises… [and authenticity.] (Source: Horse Stall Haiku)
Might be awfully neat to incorporate that [highly charactered lumber] into a table or bench top with a couple of inlaid bowties!— Geo Davis
[…]
I love the imperfections. A table would be perfect and beautiful.— Pam Murphy
Perfect imperfection. Now we get to start dreaming up a project…
Wabi-sabi, the perfection of imperfection.— Geo Davis
(Source: Perfect Imperfection)
Honoring the tradition of wabi-sabi, a butterfly joint transforms failure and obsolescence into handsome, enduring, functional art.
What do you think?