Hearth and Forge
"It became clear to us throughout the forging process how raw steel can be shaped and manipulated to achieve different volumes and balance weight." - Author: Kurtis Major Photos: Max...
Field Materials
On the occasion of Terasu’s fifth year, we present Terasu Vol 1.5 Field Materials, a previously unpublished collection of thoughts, images, tools, and conversations gathered from ‘the field’ prior to, during, and in the aftermath of creating Vol 01 Early Hues and Vol 02 Connective Tissue.
Softcover, saddle stitch bound, edition of 1000. Comes in a slipcase.
Photography by Yoshiki Hase, Jörgen Axelvall, Kanoa Zimmerman, Alex Yoder, Margaux Arramon-Tucoo, Rob Schanz, Yusuke Sakamoto, Natalie Jurrjens, Max Houtzager
Illustrations by Rosanna Tasker
Recipes by Lee Desrosiers, Kurtis Major
Essays by Kotaro Anzai, Shinobu Namae, Kotaro Anzai, Kanako Teshigawara, Junko Schwesig, Koji Shibata, Max Houtzager
Additional thanks to Val M Cantú, Otsuka Hamono Kaji, Hironori Yasuda, Aaron Koseba, MO3
Japan Stockists On Sundays, Aoyama Book Center, Tsutaya Daikanyama, Ride Surf, Gentem Niseko, Ken Nakahashi
US Stockists Park Life, Poet and the Bench, The Human Condition, Heath Newsstand
$40.00
Latest Products
Yamagoya Knife by Otsuka Hamono for Terasu.
This first run is a very limited quantity.
The Terasu Yamagoya (mountain-hut) knife by Otsuka Hamono is an excellent Japanese knife for outdoor uses that require more durability. The blade steel used, aogami #1, is known to have long edge retention, yet still maintain exceptional hardness when hand-forged and heat treated by a skilled smith.
While Sakai City near Osaka is well known for having a high concentration of skilled bladesmiths, Tottori is located in the region in Western Japan, formerly known as Inaba, famous for the iron rich sand which is used to make high quality Japanese blade steels. The few remaining bladesmiths in this sparsely populated region are deep with their craft. Tottori in particular has a strong history of the mingei (craft) movement led by Yanagi Soetsu's follower Yoshida Shoya.
Otsuka San is a 4th generation bladesmith in Tottori. The waiting list for his knives is 1-2 years long, only accepting orders from a limited customer base of clientele he respects and knows will understand his work, namely a few restaurants in Tokyo, Paris, and Milan.
Blade steel (knife edge) will patina black over time.
GastronomyYamagoya Knife
$360.00
Volume 02 focuses on the relationship between humans and water across the work of 4 photographers and a microbiologist.
Edition of 1000.
4 Cover variations.
Photographers - Eric Wolfinger, Taro Tamai, Amado Stachefeld, Max Houtzager, and Frances Tran
Written supplement (Japanese + English) of 5 essays by Shinobu Namae, Frances Tran, Katina Connaughton and Aaron Koseba, Max Houtzager, and Dan Crockett.
PrintVol 02 | Connective Tissue
$56.00
PHOTOS: Max Houtzager and Nate Garcia
LOCATION: Ventura, California
Brothers Scott and Kurtis Major, founders of Birdview Distillery, are on a quest to capture the Californian experience in a glass with a unique spirit they call El Castor.We sat down with the two to talk about their inspiration, process and goals making El Castor, the final product, and what’s new with Birdview.
What motivated the decision to incorporate cactus into the El Castor’s recipe?
For us, the cactus represents the purest essence of Californian aesthetic. Born and raised in the arid coastal environment, we came to ask ourselves the following questions: What is the “flavor” of California? How has this state and its endless beauty shaped our lives? What energizes California’s subconscious draw, making it so desirable and sexy in the popular imagination?
Looking on a fundamental level at what comprises the Californian ethos, we notice its rugged yet beautiful climate. Southern California is a desert, which inspired us to use ingredients that are drought tolerant, sustainable and, most of all, emblematic of our home. The Californian environment spans endless visual pleasures, where succulents dominate native terrain and culture. Amongst the abundant varieties within this diverse family, there is one particular species of cactus that we saw fit to represent California in making El Castor: the beavertail cactus, which grew semi wild in our childhood backyard.
Why don’t we see more spirits with prickly pear?
It’s hard to say, but we think that people are more focused on products and flavors with an established market — products that have proven popularity, mass appeal, broad familiarity with how they taste and how well they sell. We chart our own path, and don’t intend to start following in the steps of others. Our goal is to push our own personal conceptions of what is possible to create something that’s maybe obscure, definitely unique and undeniably Californian.
How does El Castor bring one closer to Californian history and experience?
A unique hands-on manufacturing process, traditional equipment and techniques, and a passion for quality connects those who sample El Castor to the land where the prickly pears are grown, its longstanding passion for superior distillation, and the experience that these factors converge to produce in a unique artisan spirit.
El Castor is handmade in the most traditional, mindful and historically authentic fashion. We have spent 8 years developing our process, called Fruit to Glass. It starts in the fields of central California, where our growers tend to 120-year-old prickly pear plants. Each prickly pear is harvested by hand and transferred into 500lb totes, which are taken to our distillery, where they undergo a transformation process unique to our company; prickly pears have never before been processed in such a quantity for the purpose of fermentation, so we designed and built our own processing line. The crushing of the whole fruit into mash is where the prickly pears begin to make their transformation. The fruit is loaded manually into a machine that removes the spines, helps clean large debris from the fruit’s surface and caramelizes the sugars. The fruit is then rinsed to remove any extra dirt and spines before the prickly pears are crushed into open top tanks, where our house yeast culture is added and the fermentation process begins, converting naturally occurring fruit sugars into alcohol. Fermentation is arguably the most important part of the process
Distillation concentrates the flavors and aromas by about 10x, therefore it is imperative to maintain clean, high quality fermentation facilities. In 10-12 days, when fermentation is complete, the largest and final transformation of wine to spirit occurs: distillation, where the alcohol in the fermented fruit is separated by heat from the wine. We use the most traditional double distillation process, borrowing our techniques and alembic still design from early Egypt and Arabia, where those cultures long ago perfected an alembic distillation method for grapes and honey. With respect to this process, little has changed over the few thousand that have since passed. I suppose this is the ultimate form of tried and true methodology, and it’s what makes Birdview Distillery and El Castor one of a kind. The Fruit to Glass process is complete when the spirit is transferred into glass bottles, corked, labeled and ready for the public to enjoy.
What inspires you to distill unorthodox spirits?
Curiosity, and a passion to make something different inspires us to distill our unconventional spirits. There are so many amazing fruits, vegetables and herbs in the world. Distilled spirits as we know them are only scratching the surface of the endless flavors that nature makes available to us: that’s why Birdview has dedicated itself to focusing on exotic and obscure fruits and plants. There are plenty of fruits out there which have most likely never been distilled before, so we feel it’s our responsibility to make new flavors and aromas accessible for people, opening their noses, taste buds, and minds to new experiences.
What else inspires you?
Kurtis: “Surfing, cooking, jewelry making, art, traveling, and stepping outside of my comfort zone. I enjoy the awkward moments in life that make me question things.”
Scott: “Nature, and a desire to understand the intricacies that make it so perfect, inspire me to think about new flavors and aromas that could be developed into a product.”
What’s next?
That is something we ask ourselves every day: for Birdview Distillery, “what’s next” is only a matter of our limits, which we constantly seek to push, and what nature provides. We have been exploring some new fruits that are uniquely dense and molasses-like, resulting in a spirit like no other, with the nose and notes of fine rum, spiciness of Bourbon and an indescribable musty-sweet undertone. Coming soon — look for it under the Birdview Distillery label.
In: Gastronomy
Birdview Distillery
Video: Rob Schanz, Max Houtzager
Photos: Max Houtzager
Location: Tokyo Japan
“I don’t have a strong consciousness of it, but there is a time when trash or nothing special seems beautiful. Then you take that and magnify it, this tiny thing, becomes special in so many ways. My patterns are the result of this.” - Hironori Yasuda
Over 20 years ago in Santa Cruz, California, Eli Atkins showed up to his first day at work at Giro Sport Design. He was surprised to find a hastily left behind desk with no computer and a few things left behind from the previous art director, but nothing of interest except for one book, SPATS. The book of all black and white patterns immediately resonated– one pattern in particular. Before he knew it, he was an avid follower of Pineapple’s Studio Graphic, collecting all the ‘Super Special Background Patterns’ books that he could, and returning to them whenever in need of inspiration.
Over the years Eli would try to find out more about who was behind the books, but despite high demand for these 80s and 90s out of print books around the world, there was little to no other traces online. “I’d meet other artists and designers and the SPATS books would often come up in conversation. Some people had books four and seven and nine while others would only have a single copy of say, book three, with missing pages and extensive wear. None of us knew anything about the artist. It was like he was just a ghost” Eli says. After finally finding contact information for someone named Hironori Yasuda on the Pineapple’s Studio Graphic website, he knew it was a must to reach out. Sure Eli can reference patterns copyright free, but how could he go on without at least exchanging one slight bit of communication. This ghost was one of Eli’s biggest influences, a guiding light of inspiration in pattern making, his hero of technique and output. He had so many questions, with an underlying sense of wonder on whether this person was even real or not. Do they share anything in common besides design? What is the source of Mr. Yasuda’s inspiration, his process, his motivation, his purpose?
After many contact attempts a response finally came, but Eli was disappointed to receive a letter of polite rejection. Eli would not give up. Finally, he convinced Yasuda to meet. In conjunction with Terasu, plans were made to meet and discuss a collaboration. It all happened in a few hours at the Terasu Studio in Tokyo. Eli knew nothing about Yasuda going into it besides the existence of a website with an infinite number of patterns and the coveted SPATS books. Twenty some years of endless wonder and yearning for connection around the designs that inspired him most would unravel in just a few hours, and ultimately be reduced back into design- in the form of the limited Giro X Yasuda collection.
In: Mountain
The Mysterious Mr. Yasuda
Gentem women's | Live your life from GENTEMSTICK on Vimeo.
"Gentem is where I can be myself. Gentem is where I can be free"
PHOTOS: Max Houtzager
VIDEO: Amado Stachenfeld
LOCATION: Hokkaido, Japan
Everyone has a role to fulfill. But now and then, it is imperative to step outside of those confines, to reinvent oneself relative to a sprawling, snowy expanse. We become the truest versions of ourselves in that blinding-white realm of endless possibility which thrusts the individual forward into the unknown. Claiming one identity by day, but carving out precious moments to switch it out for another; the boards we ride undergo a similar substitution as the seasons change. We seamlessly adapt, gliding with tremendous speed into completely new environments to blur the boundaries between future and past, summer and winter, water and snow. On the glittering slope, we create spaces entirely our own, impenetrable to expectations of the outside world.
In: Mountain
Gentem Women's
Next Event
Preview Vol 04: Field Materials'Preview' is a series of meals between California and Japan featuring a variety of chefs, food producers, and artists who are well versed in food, where people come together to test and create new ways of gathering, cooking, and eating. For Vol 04 we are partnering with the Aoyama Bread Festival at the Tokyo Farmer's Market and will also be releasing our next print edition, 'Field Materials' on the occasion.
The menu for the day will be tied to the contents of 'Field Materials', which is a field guide created from the beginnings of Terasu 5 years ago through to the aftermath of Vol 02, released last year.
Menu:
Bread: Coffeebuster's Japanese Alps beer levain
Max's Ancient Grain Koji Pan Loaf
Vegetable: Burdock pomegranate salad, charcoal grilled marinated night shades
Main: Matsutake Nicoise
Drink: Birdview Distillery Cocktails
Event Info:
Time：11/16, 11:30 entrance、12:00 start
Location：Farmer's Market Community Lounge
Tickets：3,000 yen ／30 people
Drinks: 800-1200 yen
After lunch we will be serving tasting plates and drinks a la carte as well as the first copies of 'Field Materials'.
Field Materials aims to reframe the idea of a ‘field guide’ in order to allow us to think differently about ‘the field’ and about ‘materials’. The makers of a field guide undergo multi-faceted deeper exploration of what they already know, do not know, will never know, and how they got to where they are.
$30.00Sold Out
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PHOTOS: Max Houtzager, Rob Schanz, Amado Stachenfeld
VIDEO: Amado Stachenfeld, Edit by Rob Schanz
LOCATION: Hokkaido, Japan
Gentemstick turned 20 years old this year. It's our third year of collaborating with them, starting in the season of 2015-2016 after meeting Alex Yoder at the Derksen Derby with the film 'Gentem Generations' and Terasu Vol 01, and more recently 'The Hunt' and Terasu Vol 02.
The extended family that has grown around this small Niseko based snowboard company has effectively changed not only snowboarding culture but snowboard culture's relationship with surf culture. Along with their deep insights on the human relationship with nature, they have lit the way for Terasu as a creative community focused not just on one worldview or one creative outlet, but on the broader synergy between interacting with the mountains, ocean, and the food that nourishes us. If you have a chance to meet the Gentem family, visit their gallery, ride one of their boards, or view their perspectives through film or photography, surely there will be unique feelings to feel and new ways to see.
We made a new film, 'VEINS', as an ode to the philosophy and energy that resonates from the Gentem family. The full film can be seen as part of 'Episodes', available for purchase here.
In: Mountain
'VEINS' for Gentem 20th Anniversary
VIDEO: Amado Stachenfeld
LOCATION: Vashon, Washington
Natural leather creates beautiful, durable goods that are inspired by the elements — these accessories are made of the earth and designed to withstand everything it can dish out.
Terasu has partnered with some of our favorite artisans to offer leather goods designed to last a lifetime. By creating timeless products that fit the modern lifestyle, we honor the earth and transfer its energy from one thing to another.
Every piece is made to order and forges a unique and lasting bond between the planet, the artisan who makes it, and its new owner who will leave their imprint on it through time and use. We believe in connecting the earth’s bounty with talented makers and passionate storytellers to create stories from physical goods and photos and words alike. Designing long lasting leather goods is one of the many ways we hope to change the conversation around how we tell stories.
View our made to order leather goods on the Terasu Store here.
In: Mountain
Leather Goods | Vashon, Washington
"It became clear to us throughout the forging process how raw steel can be shaped and manipulated to achieve different volumes and balance weight."
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Author: Kurtis Major
Photos: Max Houtzager
Location: Sausalito and Oakland, California
After several other projects in cohorts with Jorgen Harle and Kurtis Major involving much cooking (over fire) and forging ferrous and non-ferrous elements, each of our passions for gastronomy inspired by our surrounding environments made for a natural progression to develop a set of grill tools.
Whether cooking directly over nothing but a small fire, or using some form of mild steel like a large plancha or cast iron pan, it felt awkward to wield highly treated, machine stamped aluminum or stainless cooking tools. After several discussions around fires for different occasions, we dove into designing and prototyping a set of tools that are better suited to real grilling- by way of using pure materials, and simple strong designs with longer handles, driven by traditional forging methods. A coffee spoon snuck its way into the mix as well.Our lead cooking tools craftsman Kurtis Major shares a few words around the process of creating these grill tools below.We developed the grill sets directly from the need to have cooking instruments that can hold up to the demanding use of cooking over open fire. These tools also aim to begin a new conversation around design and function. In doing so we hope that the user can feel something deeper and gain a clearer sense of the implications of cooking over fire. It is not something employed simply to impart smokey flavor to food or provide a better char, or just an option to cook when camping. In order to achieve this goal, we would try to make tools that are balanced and comfortable in use but driven by the forging process, in the same way grilled food is shaped by the fire. While our initial drawings were specific to function, close observation of how the raw material wanted to be shaped and formed changed the design greatly. It became clear to us throughout the forging process how raw steel can be shaped and manipulated to achieve different forms of volume and balance weight. Observing the volume and movement of molten metal around each tool influenced the tactile feeling of the tools significantly. We ended up with two sets, both durable and balanced but one with a lighter and more nimble construction, and one with a more elemental feel.
In: Gastronomy
Hearth and Forge