Glass, Wood, Craft and Bamboo

August 28, 2026

Friday started out slower beach it was a free day and I wanted to sleep in and dilly dally during the day. I ate breakfast and left to go Yongkang. I wanted the streets aimlessly and bought a few new outfits. Then I met up with Erin and Kiki for aglassblowing class! I made a vase for my grandma.

I loved how physical the process was. The heat, the weight of the rod, the movement, and the timing all mattered at once. It made the finished glass objects feel much more impressive once I understood even a tiny bit of what goes into making them.

After that, I let the group to get one last good look at Taipei as we would leave for taichung to in the morning. The hike was a mile of stairs but incredible.

It was nice to have a quite moment to reflect on how much I had learn during the busy week of incredible activities and delightful people. 

The next day after arriving in Taichung, we shifted back into making and visited Chen's woodworking space.

I could have looked at the tools forever. Some of the tools had been used for generations.. Watching someone work in that environment made the process feel incredibly precise and practiced.

As a designer, I spend so much time working on a computer that I sometimes forget how much design knowledge can live completely in your hands. The way someone understands a material after working with it for decades is something you cannot really recreate digitally.

Next, we visited the National Taiwan Craft Research and Development Institute, where we saw a much broader range of contemporary Taiwanese craft.

This was one of my favorite stops visually. There were furniture pieces made from natural materials and objects that felt very contemporary while still being connected to traditional techniques.

I loved seeing how bamboo and wood could be shaped into forms that did not feel old-fashioned at all. The whole space made me think more about the difference between preserving a craft exactly as it has always been done and allowing it to keep changing.

We ended the day with a bamboo weaving workshop, which looked much easier than it actually was.

Our task was to weave a bamboo cover for a book. We worked with long, thin strips of bamboo and followed a repeating pattern, slowly building the surface piece by piece.

And when I say slowly, I mean painstakingly slowly.

Every time I thought I finally understood the pattern, I would realize one strip was going over when it was supposed to go under and have to backtrack. It required way more concentration and patience than I expected.

By the end, though, I think that was exactly what made it satisfying. After spending the day watching people master glass, wood, textiles, and bamboo, our little book cover felt surprisingly difficult. It gave me a much better appreciation for how much skill is hidden inside handmade objects.

It was a very full day, but probably one of my favorites so far.