Bend Goods has always led with metal. Precision-bent wire. Thick-gauge aluminum tube. The discipline of shaping steel and aluminum into something that lasts. Wood has appeared in our work on a limited basis over the years and we have always appreciated it as a material, but it has never been a primary focus. It is a different discipline entirely, one that requires a different set of tools, skills, and thinking. A trip to Japan changed how seriously we wanted to pursue it.
Near Mount Fuji.
On a Train from Mount Fuji. A Bowl of Ramen.
It wasn't a design museum or an architecture tour that changed my thinking. It was lunch.
Taking the train from Mount Fuji toward Kyoto, we stopped for ramen at a small shop along the way. The kind of place you find by instinct rather than by recommendation. I noticed the interior the way you notice things when you are not rushing. Simple ash wood. Clean joints. Nothing lacquered or decorated. The warmth of the material doing all the work, without a single decorative element trying to help it along.
The chairs were the same. Simple wood backs, minimal construction, the kind of seating that doesn't ask for your attention but holds it anyway. I looked around and realized the entire room felt considered without feeling designed. That is a hard thing to achieve. Most interiors try too hard. This one didn't try at all. It just was.
I took photographs. I came back to Los Angeles and looked at them for months.
What Japan Does Differently
Japanese design has a concept called ma, the idea of negative space, of what is left out rather than what is added. It is the pause in a sentence. The gap between objects that gives each one room to breathe.
Walking through Kyoto, through the markets of Nishiki, through the covered arcade streets and the temple gardens, I kept seeing it everywhere: restraint as an active choice, not an absence of ideas. What struck me most was how wood was used. Not as a luxury material to be shown off, but as something honest and functional that happened to be beautiful. Ash wood in its natural grain, occasionally painted in a flat semi-matte color that let the texture show through. Warm without being precious. Simple without being cold.
A restaurant interior in Kyoto. Tatami, dark wood, and nothing unnecessary. The kind of space that makes you want to sit down and stay.
This restaurant in Kyoto is the clearest example of what I mean. Tatami floor. Dark wood partitions. Shoji screens filtering the light. A private dining alcove with a simple table and two chairs. Nothing in the room was trying to impress anyone. Everything in the room was exactly right. The wood did not need to be decorated because the wood itself was enough.
The hotel room in Kyoto. Tatami and walnut wood. Every material choice made with intention.
The hotel room told the same story at a smaller scale. Tatami floor meeting dark walnut wood joinery. Warm walls. Clean lines at every junction. Nothing fussy, nothing gratuitous. Japanese interiors at their best feel like every decision was made once, correctly, and then left alone. There is a lesson in that for furniture design and for everything else.
A Shinto shrine in Kyoto. Wood, stone, and garden, the same restraint applied across centuries of craft.
The Shrine. The Garden. The Craft.
Visiting the shrines and temple gardens of Kyoto reinforced something I had been feeling since the train from Mount Fuji. Japanese craft is not just about how things look. It is about how long they are meant to last, and how honestly the materials are allowed to express themselves. Dark wood temple architecture that has stood for centuries not because it was over engineered but because the right materials were used with the right level of care. Stone and moss and raked gravel doing exactly what they need to do and nothing more.
This is the design philosophy behind the name Hinoki. The Japanese cypress has been used in temple construction for over a thousand years because of its beauty, its warmth, and its durability. Naming the collection after it is not a branding decision. It is an acknowledgment of where the thinking came from.
The Oi River, Arashiyama, Kyoto. The landscape that sits behind everything the collection became.
Arashiyama at the western edge of Kyoto. The Oi River quiet and wide, blue rowboats, forested mountains. This is the atmosphere that stays with you after Japan. Not just the design details but the feeling of a place where slowness is not a failure of efficiency but a choice. Where the gap between things is as important as the things themselves. Where a bowl of ramen in a small wood-panelled shop can stop you in your tracks.
Two Years Later: The Hinoki Collection
The answer took two years to get right. The result is the Hinoki Collection, the most ambitious exploration of wood Bend Goods has undertaken, and the beginning of what we believe will be a much larger chapter for the studio.
Named after the Japanese cypress, a wood celebrated in Japan for its beauty, warmth, and longevity, used in temple architecture and traditional craft for centuries, the Hinoki Collection pairs an ash wood backrest with a vegan leather seat and slender steel legs. Three heights: a dining chair, a counter stool, and a bar stool, all sharing the same design language so a space can be furnished with total consistency from dining table to kitchen island to bar.
The wood colors were a conscious departure from what I photographed in Japan. Those interiors were beautiful precisely because they were natural and unadorned. But Bend Goods has always brought color and character to forms that could easily stay neutral. The Terracotta and Deep Peacock Blue wood finishes are our answer: keeping the warmth and grain of ash wood while making each piece feel unmistakably contemporary. A fresh take on a material we are only beginning to fully explore.
We now have the capability to do much more with wood than we have in the past. The Hinoki Collection is the first real expression of that capability. It will not be the last.
That ramen shop on the train from Mount Fuji didn't have a design statement on the wall. It didn't need one. The materials said everything. That is what we built the Hinoki Collection to do.
Simple enough to disappear. Beautiful enough to stay.
Shop the Hinoki Collection
Hinoki Dining Chair - $360
Hinoki Counter Stool - $380
Hinoki Bar Stool - $400
Custom and COM orders available for hospitality and contract projects. Trade pricing available through the Bend Goods Trade Program.
