Truck
Truck
Craft, Interior Design, Architecture
Osaka, Japan
‘Happy’ was the only word I could think of after my first encounter with Tokuhiko Kise and even that didn’t seem to fully explain the way I felt at the time. I realised there wasn’t a word for it and so I immersed myself in this new-found ‘happiness’. It was during my first visit to New York five years ago when I came across TRUCK in a bookshop, where I picked up a copy of Faculty Department and got completely lost in Tokuhiko’s story beautifully captured and told by Justin Chung. First paragraph in I found myself making a promise to meet Tokuhiko one day, even if it’s just a quick hello. Five years later I’m on his doorstep, being introduced to the charming team behind TRUCK and Bird, as well as his wife Hiromi Karatsu.
“TRUCK is the furniture company that we, Tokuhiko Kise and Hiromi Karatsu, started in 1997. We create furniture that we want ourselves, regardless of popular trends or fashions. We make furniture that accentuates and emphasizes the natural beauty of the wood, leather, and metal that it is made of. We don't make pieces that are showy or different for the sake of being different, but rather those that are made to last and be used over a lifetime. We also believe that the environment in which our furniture is displayed is just as important as the furniture itself, so we do not sell it anywhere else but here in our store in Osaka, where we can take special care of the entire space. This is our space in Osaka, where our style of creating and selling here will never change.”
“In December 2009, we moved our store from Tamatsukuri, where we had been for thirteen years, to our newly-created space in Asahiku. Bird cafe, the AREA2 shop, the workshop, and Atelier Shirokumasha brought the entire place together in a cozy space full of lush greenery. To make our special space where we were surrounded by big trees, we started from zero and got our hands into every little aspect of it – making the plan that took us two and a half years from the time that we bought the land until the opening of the store, the construction, building the buildings and implanting the trees, making the brick walls, and everything else.”
From the very beginning of TRUCK, Tokuhiko and Hiromi wanted a space for people who came to their shop to be able to sit down for a while. Then they thought, “What if it also had delicious doughnuts and coffee…?” And so the idea for Bird came about. “When we thought about creating Bird, a completely different business than making and selling furniture, we figured that the principle was the same: good food, good coffee, good tea, good beer and wine, and of course, good doughnuts. We wanted to eat and drink those things so we were going to make them. That was our principle idea. But maybe we were a bit biased about our choices. In a way, we think that because we really like what we make, we can say to someone with confidence, “It’s good, isn’t it?” There’s no hidden meaning in that. It’s our honest feeling. And that feeling is the same for Bird as it has been for TRUCK. We think it’s especially important to have an open space where we can be happy.”
Just as I recall Justin's first visit, a brief encounter turned into a whole day spent together sharing stories, with my partner Campbell Addy filling in the blanks when I had my face glued to the camera or was too much in awe of everything around me that exuded hard-work, craftsmanship and love for nature. It was the most memorable experience behind the lense so far.
