A Japan-trained master carpenter who designs and builds tea rooms and washitsu locally.
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Source: kiarts.com
Ki Arts is a family business started in Northern California in 1985 by Hiroshi Sakaguchi, a carpenter trained in Japan, and his wife Ann Gerber Sakaguchi. "Ki" means wood in Japanese. The workshop sits on a ridge in Sonoma County near the Pacific and the Russian River, about an hour and fifteen minutes' drive north of San Francisco.
Sakaguchi began an apprenticeship in Japanese joinery at 15 and worked on traditional houses and tea houses in Japan before moving to the U.S. Following the Japanese tradition in which the carpenter is both designer and builder, he designs and builds Japanese rooms (nihonma), tearooms, bathing rooms with wooden ofuro, gates, and garden structures such as pavilions, taikobashi bridges and pergolas. Components are cut at the workshop and assembled on site, so he can build far afield. Woods include Port Orford cedar from southern Oregon.
He has long experience reconciling Japanese post-and-beam work with American 2x4 houses and building codes, and adapting rooms to Western habits, for example with a horikotatsu. His work appears in homes, parks, restaurants and temples in the U.S., Canada and Europe, including a six-mat tearoom in Sausalito. The firm's own guide puts a traditional tea house at around $2,000 per square foot. A fit for anyone in North America who wants an authentic tearoom or Japanese room.
A six-mat tearoom with a central brazier and a ceiling hook for hanging the kettle. The ceiling is divided into three patterns (woven ajiro, coffered go-tenjo, and cedar panels held by bamboo), walls are juraku mud plaster, and the tokonoma has a cherry floor, a latticed shitaji-mado window and a round cedar post.
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A garden complex for a private home: a 4.5-mat gabled tea house overlooking a koi pond, with an open veranda whose posts sit on granite stones; Port Orford cedar frame, layered red cedar shingles and ceramic ridge tiles. A sheltered bench (machiai) with imported hinoki posts and juraku walls, an entrance gate and a curved bridge complete the set.
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A small private bathhouse in a garden with a koi pond, combining a bathing room with a cedar ofuro and a 4.5-mat informal tearoom separated by shoji. The tearoom has a low table over a horikotatsu, a sink and a built-in step shrine; juraku walls, red cedar ceiling, Alaskan yellow cedar frame and a surrounding engawa.
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A traditional Japanese house at Green Gulch Farm (San Francisco Zen Center) that includes a tearoom and mizuya for studying tea. The genkan has a black-pebble floor and mud-plaster walls, and the kitchen and bathing room also use Japanese woodwork.
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A versatile seven-mat room used as guest, dining or family room, with a horikotatsu and a 3×6 ft black ash table at its center. Southern cypress frame, western red cedar ceiling, juraku walls, yukimi shoji with sliding glass doors, and a tokonoma of cypress, Dutch elm and rosewood.
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For the Asian section of Les Quatre Vents Gardens near La Malbaie, Sakaguchi built two viewing pavilions (one partly over a trout pond), a sheltered bench and a middle gate. All components were cut and hand-planed at the Ki Arts workshop, shipped and assembled on site by him, along with the furnishings.
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For a Silicon Valley CEO: a conference room inside an office building with tokonoma, tatami, red cedar ceiling and mud-plaster walls, plus a home office combining six tatami mats with white cedar flooring and a bathing room with a granite soaking tub.
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A curved bridge from the second floor of a house over a trout pond to a deck leading to a bonsai garden, with a wisteria pergola and hand-carved railing, all in Alaskan yellow cedar.
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An Alaskan yellow cedar gate with oyako (parent-child) doors whose vertical slats match the Japanese-style sliding front door, topped with Japanese ceramic tiles.
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A bathing room with ofuro, wall panels and removable slatted floor in Port Orford cedar, and a light fixture integrated into the red cedar ceiling.
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Entrance door (cherry panels in a Port Orford cedar frame), booths, counter and tables for a Santa Fe restaurant, now closed.
View on official site ↗Photos: Ki Arts official website
Structures are post-and-beam frames held by hand-cut joinery made with chisels, hammers and saws, so sharpening is fundamental: Sakaguchi spent the first year of his apprenticeship learning to sharpen.
The Japanese plane is pulled toward the user and leaves a soft sheen on the wood. The site notes he is one of few traditional Japanese carpenters practicing in the U.S.
Main woods are Port Orford cedar from southern Oregon, Alaskan yellow cedar and western red cedar. Lumber must be dry, so projects need to be planned well ahead.
Once ready, all parts are measured, marked, cut and hand-planed at the workshop, then taken to the site and assembled. Furniture is made the same way and finished with oil or natural lacquer.
Sakaguchi says that for gates, bridges and pavilions he considers not only how they look now but how nature will age them over time.
He builds traditional structures for Japanese gardens and also designs pieces suited to Western or mixed-style gardens: pavilions, gates and middle gates, fences, machiai, wisteria pergolas and bridges.
Photos: Ki Arts official website
| Company | Ki Arts |
|---|---|
| Address | Workshop in Sonoma County, California; mail: PO Box 631, Occidental, CA 95465 |
| Founded | 1985 |
| Representative | Hiroshi Sakaguchi (Japan-trained carpenter); co-founded with Ann Gerber Sakaguchi |
| Business | Design and build of Japanese rooms, tearooms, bathing rooms with ofuro, gates and garden structures; Japanese furniture, butsudan and kamidana |
| Phone | +1-707-874-3361 (phone/fax) |
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