Working from a furniture maker’s workshop in Huddersfield where he is surrounded by the natural world, Yukihiro Akama creates beautifully intricate miniature wooden houses, each one carved from a single piece of wood.
Originally from Japan, Akama worked as an architect and built a traditional timber and mud store house using his mother’s gardening tools. Each work he creates reflects his memories of this intimate process, representing home, loss, identity and love.
He begins with a hand drawn sketch on an offcut of oak, walnut, sapele, iroko or maple. The wood often dictates the starting point for the design, with the knots guiding where Akama cuts and carves. Gradually they take on the appearance of traditional Asian stilt houses –low and long, with large roofs, with intricate details of clay render and pebbles minimally decorating the surfaces. Akama uses traditional Japanese tools, creating rough surfaces to sit against smooth, and finishing areas with a blow torch prior to polishing and oiling each piece.
