Japanese influence - 'temple post'

Whilst Fiona and I were in Japan for the sister city art-culture exchange with Tatebayshi we were fortunate to visit a few temples particularly in Kyoto and Tatebayshi. The use of large square timber, copper sheeting and decorations and the mystery of the kanji symbols (at least for me) exuded a sense of calm for me.

As earlier blog posts indicate I love to combine timber with inspirational words, symbols (peace) or haikus. For our own block I have made a several ‘message posts’ that are spread randomly around the place. I hope to continue to do this so that as we walk around the block we will come across these hidden treasures that can remind us to be peaceful as we go about our lives – probably particularly when we are weeding.

I want to do a couple of posts for our place that capture a bit of the temple calmness and mystery. Whilst I have produced the post featured in this blog for David Linton in a way it was a good opportunity for me to test features that could appear on our ‘temple posts’.

I used old patina copper from a laundry boiler, off cut timber salvaged from our house and new copper tacks from the hardware store in Tatebayshi.

The kanji on the four sides of the post spell out - peace, joy, happines and love.