The artist
Philip Kahn
Philip Kahn’s relationship with wood began in a grade-school shop room in Los Angeles, where a restless kid sent to sweep up shavings discovered something worth staying for. By Paul Revere Junior High, a woodshop teacher was unlocking the doors after hours so he could keep working; by high school he was drafting his own designs.
That same instinct for structure carried him to SCI-Arc, where he earned a degree in architecture while apprenticing on custom homes around Los Angeles — including several designed by Raymond Kappe.
In the early 1980s, Kahn moved to the Big Island of Hawaii. It was there, inspired by spoon maker Norm Sartorius, that his sculptural voice found wood. He fell for the intimacy of finely tuned carved bowls — the turned, sculptural forms that have defined his work since.
Each one honoring the grain, the flaws, and the history already inside the wood before he ever touched it.
Today, from a fifteen-acre property, Kahn turns exotic timbers into one-of-a-kind bowls. He is now offering these unique pieces for the first time — the result of decades of experimentation and quiet devotion to his material.
Influences
Two touchstones
Norm Sartorius
For thirty years, Sartorius has explored the wooden spoon as a context for sculpture, using rare and unusual woods to shape each piece into a unique statement of color, form, and texture. His work tests the boundary between art and craft, driven by dialogue between maker and material.
Craft in America
George Nakashima
Nakashima’s work emphasizes the best use of a beautiful piece of wood in simple forms drawn from both Japanese and early American tradition, producing pieces of timeless simplicity, pure line, and sensitive proportion — working, in his words, “from the characteristics of the material and methods of construction outwards, to produce an integrated and honest object.”
Smithsonian American Art Museum