TOSHIO TOKUNAGA

Working from a studio in the lush hills of Hyogo Prefecture, Toshio Tokunaga combines deep expertise in Kanna, a traditional Japanese woodworking process, with a delicate and evocative personal style to produce works of incomparable beauty. Avoiding power tools and sanding of any kind, Kanna is a patient and intuitive process guided by the hand’s touch. Tokunaga sees the tool as akin to a stethoscope that tells him the condition of the wood and how it will respond. His consciousness as a designer lives as much in his fingertips as in his mind.

In 2002, Tokunaga produced the ‘Decorated Mulberry Go Board’ to celebrate the 1100th anniversary of the founding of the Dazaifu Tenmangu Shrine of Fukuoka, now considered one of its sacred treasures. The following year, he was invited to participate in the ‘Contemporary Furniture and Woodworks in Japan’ exhibition at the National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo. Now in his 70s, Tokunaga is a true master, and his recent works represent the summit of a lifetime of apprenticeship and preparation.
 

Master Tokunaga and his daughter Yuriko are now working to acquire and reforest the abandoned rice fields (now bamboo forest) around their home and studio in the Hyogo Prefecture. As the trees they use in their work are decreasing in availability, the Tokunaga family wanted to take action and work to reforest the land with trees for the future generations to work with. Radnor is honored to represent the work of Toshio Tokunaga and the Tokunaga family.