From Asahikawa’s furniture culture to wooden mechanisms and everyday objects people keep for decades.
In Asahikawa, woodworking is part of the city’s working life. Craftspeople have passed down furniture-making skills for more than a century, supported by Hokkaido’s forests and a community of factories, designers, and independent workshops. Tanno Norio was born here in 1951, and his work carries that culture into objects small enough to hold in one hand. A card case, a little drawer, or a wooden box becomes a place to explore how wood can move, fasten, and endure.
His path began in furniture. After studying design, he joined Interior Center, the company now known as CondeHouse, before leaving to develop his own making skills and eventually opening an independent workshop. Over the following decades, wooden hinges, catches, and locks became a recurring interest. Alongside that mechanical curiosity grew a reluctance to discard material: even a small offcut could become something useful.
The relationship continues after an object leaves his workshop. When we met him, he told us about customers who return after ten or twenty years of use to have a little hinge repaired. He appreciates that they have kept the object in their lives. One person, he said, has been using one of his business card cases for thirty years. The length of that attachment still surprises him.
For Tanno, a small wooden object can hold an unexpectedly long future.
Asahikawa’s tradition of making
To understand Tanno’s work, it helps to understand the place around it. Asahikawa’s modern furniture industry grew during the late Meiji period, when carpenters arrived from Japan’s main island as the city developed. Their skills became the foundation for a trade that has continued across generations.
The region’s later identity was shaped by manufacturers who connected local production with contemporary design. Interior Center and Takumi Kohgei became important parts of that environment, and craftspeople trained in larger companies went on to establish businesses of their own. The International Furniture Design Competition Asahikawa, launched in 1990, opened another connection to designers overseas.
This setting matters to Tanno’s story because it brings design and production close together. The person drawing an object can learn from the person making it, and a workshop becomes a place to develop an idea, change it, and understand why it works.
Learning beyond the drawing
Tanno graduated from the Hokkaido Design Lab in 1973 and joined Interior Center that year, working in product development and design. In 1977, he left to develop his design and cabinetmaking skills, and in 1980 he established his own workshop. The following year, a wooden-box exhibition at the Hokkaido Museum of Modern Art brought him a prize with Keijiro Nakai, an experience he considers foundational to his later work.
When we asked about his beginnings, he remembered a boss who told him that drawing furniture on paper was not enough. He needed to be able to build it. That advice gave making a central role in his understanding of design.
It remains part of his process. Asked where his ideas come from, he explained that inspiration develops naturally while he is crafting. He encourages designers who work in their heads or on computers to build things themselves, because making gives them information that a drawing cannot.
His interest in small mechanisms also has a practical origin. He recalled a friend making a wooden bag who needed hinges, fasteners, and handles. Those parts fascinated him enough that, decades later, he still talks about returning to them as a project.
Giving the offcut another purpose
Tanno’s attachment to wood begins before there is a finished product. He spoke to us about the time trees take to grow and the responsibility of treating timber as a precious resource. He also admitted that he struggles to throw away the tiny pieces left over from cutting. Keeping them creates a problem in the workshop, he said, but it also gives him material for things people can use and cherish.
There is something familiar and affectionate in that admission. Anyone who has made things knows the temptation to save a piece because it might be useful later. In Tanno’s practice, that impulse becomes a way of paying attention to what is already available.
A regional design study recorded the Tanno family describing their approach through the idea of a staff meal: making something useful for everyday life from the materials at hand. It is a grounded way to explain their work, with resourcefulness at its center.
His own archive offers a specific example. A four-card SD holder from 2020 is made from material left over from his round card case. What remains from one object becomes the starting point for another.
Making wood move
The pleasure of Tanno’s work often appears when you open it. In his archive, the Worm Lock Box opens its front and side drawers when its worm-shaped element is pulled. In another design, a bud releases a drawer. A dial unlocks a box, and a later shelf releases its lock only when all six drawers are positioned correctly. These mechanisms invite you to discover the object through movement.
Furniture maker Hugh Miller visited Tanno in December 2015 for his study of Japanese wood craftsmanship. He documented Tanno’s foot-pedal milling machine and his development of wooden hinges, catches, and combination locks, connecting those mechanisms to the precision of the machine combined with Tanno’s understanding of timber.
Tanno himself speaks enthusiastically about making small parts with machines. His view is practical: machinery gives him a way to produce the things he wants to make. In a statement for the Asahikawa Design Center’s 2023 family exhibition, he explained that machine work still depends on human hands for its final finish, and that different hands leave subtle differences even when the machining is the same.
The same statement describes the limits of control. Wood responds to humidity; it can warp, distort, and crack. Even pieces of the same species differ in grain, color, and texture. His approach is to keep paying attention to the material as he works.
The result is a kind of design that asks for both curiosity and patience. The mechanism has to work, and the material has to be understood.
An object worth keeping
The customers who return for a repair complete the story. A hinge may be a tiny component, but repairing it allows a familiar object to remain useful. The owner has already chosen to keep it; the maker helps that relationship continue. One retailer’s description of his round card holder notes stainless-steel springs and screws concealed inside the hinges and catches, so that damaged parts can be repaired.
His story of the thirty-year-old card case leads directly to gratitude. He had never imagined someone would use it for so long. He is thankful that he can continue making things, and that people continue using them.
He also shares his methods. He taught at the Carl Malmsten school in Stockholm in 2006, and he told us that people who see his process on Instagram often want to try woodworking themselves. He describes himself as clumsy, yet insists there is always a way to make things. It is an encouraging attitude from someone whose work can at first seem difficult to approach.
Our collaboration
Over two years, we worked with Tanno on a drawer box designed by BrandsWalk and made in his workshop from solid Yamazakura, Japanese wild cherry. It carries his signature finger catch, hidden splines at the corners, and a tiny metal spring alongside its wooden components. Working with him showed us firsthand how much thought goes into a single mechanism.
For us, that may be the most meaningful part of meeting Tanno. His objects encourage us to look closely, but his outlook is easy to understand: take care of the material, find a way to make something useful, and appreciate the people who keep using it.
A little hinge repaired after years of use makes those values tangible. The object goes back into someone’s daily life, ready to be opened again.
All photographs © BrandsWalk.
Sources
- Asahikawa City: Introduction
- Okaya: Tanno Family Woodwork Exhibition (2022)
- Danish Cabinetmakers Association: Norio Tanno CV
- Producing District and Design: Asahikawa
- Craft & Design TANNO
- Hugh Miller: Japanese Wood Craftsmanship
- Asahikawa Design Center: Tanno Family Exhibition (2023)
- Teiza: Tanno Norio Round Card Holder
