跳台與木器 Tiaotai & Woodware Visual Identity

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Client & Exhibition description：Editions du Flaneur 行人出版社
Exhibition Design：Liu Hsuantzu

In Fengyuan we find the “tiaotai”, a technology with both Japanese and U.S. connections that profoundly shaped the development of the local wood and lacquer industries. By producing huge quantities of American salad bowls and Japanese lacquerware, this machine made Fengyuan rich on foreign money. But for us, the question is whether this manufacturing method has the potential to become a form of craft and live on in an artisanal iteration?

“Tiaotai” is actually a woodturning lathe remodeled specifically to suit the production of vessels like cups, bowls and plates. The prototype “"Suzuki style lathe” from Aizu in Japan was introduced to Taiwan in the 1960s by Japanese consultants in the employment of the U.S. Milbern-Heller Woodcraft Co., Ltd. (known colloquially as the American Company). As the technology took root, Fengyuan was able to turn out numerous skillful woodturners, and this humble maker of tableware also started to fulfill outsource orders of Japanese lacquerware in the 1970s. Nevertheless, as manufacturing industries shifted away from Taiwan and the forest preservation order came into effect, “tiaotai” gradually faded out of use and now only a few woodturners remain.

These woodturners are not considered master artisans and what they produced are mostly everyday objects without much intrinsic value. However, in the course of our research and interviews, we came to realize that this machine that carved the history of Fengyuan's wood industry should have a place of indelible importance and that each item it produced tells a unique story of the industrial heritage of Taiwan in its heyday as “the world's factory.”

This exhibition presents the complete production of a wood object on the lathe. While it could be said that as a machine, the “tiaotai” enjoyed a perfect existence from being introduced to Taiwan and repurposed for optimal manufacturing use, as an item of cultural significance, could we not look at it in a fresh perspective and find for it a different future?