TFG Events & Workshops

Tim Chauvin

Red Suspenders Timber Frames, Founder & President

A New England native, Tim has been practicing timber framing in Texas since 1983 when he and his wife Wynter founded Red Suspenders Timber Frames, Inc. He continues his daily work with the company as president and is allowed by the staff to actually work in the shop on occasion. Tim has served three terms on the Guild Board of Directors, been instrumental in organizing and teaching numerous Guild workshops throughout Texas, and has been a presenter at several Guild conferences.

Tim’s relationship with China began in 2000 when he and Wynter began the process of adopting a child from China. He has since traveled to China many times and spent the majority of 2007 with his family in China where they lived and toured most of the country. He has researched Chinese timber framing extensively and both lectured on and written about the subject.

Tim resides in Nacogdoches, Texas, with his wife and two daughters, Marit and Mattie, in a timber framed home that many Guild members helped raised in 1994. He remains grateful for and humbled by that outpouring of assistance and friendship by the Guild community.

www.redsuspenderstf.com

Presentation

Historic Timber Framing in China
In the 1970s, when the timber frame revival was just beginning, Richard Nixon had just made his historic visit to China. China had been closed to the west for many decades and our knowledge of that country was very limited and often politically skewed. While many of us involved in timber framing looked to both Europe and Japan for ideas and inspiration for our work, we had little knowledge of or access to China’s extensive and impressive timber framing heritage.

As China has opened itself to the rest of the world since 1980 we have slowly come to know a bit about timber framing in China. Western visitors to China are gaining much familiarity with and a new appreciation of China’s architectural heritage. Researchers and restoration workers in China have also been busy collecting information on and documenting these historic structures over the last several decades. A considerable body of technical knowledge is currently being gathered.

I first traveled to China in 2001 and was amazed by what I saw. The timber framed structures were magnificent, complex, often intricately detailed, and regionally diverse. It was a complete surprise to me that so many first millennial timber structures still existed and were in daily use. Before that trip I had only the vaguest notion about Chinese timber framing and suspected little of it survived. After a second trip to China in 2003, a six-month long stay there in 2007, an extended stay in 2010 centered around the Guild’s Frame Spotting trip, and extensive research on the subject I now have a much broader appreciation of China’s timber frame heritage.

Timber framed structures in China range from simple dwellings to magnificent temples and government structures. Take for example the Forbidden City in Beijing. Built between 1406 and 1420, the Forbidden City, the seat of Chinese dynastic government until 1920, has nearly 1,000 timber-framed structures set on the 180 acres within the city walls. It is likely the largest and densest collection of timber framed buildings in the world. In and around Beijing there are also many other sites with timber framed structures that are more than 1,000 years old. The iconic portrait of Mao, so often seen in the print as the modern symbol of China, is mounted on Tiananmen Gate, which is capped by a large and impressive timber frame.

Outside of Beijing, there are numerous other timber framed structures. Many Taoist and Buddhist temples throughout the country are timber framed. Historic cities such as Keifang and Xi’an still have their original city walls with their impressive timber framed gates and watchtowers still intact. In certain rural areas of China, timber framing is still practiced for all manner of buildings.

Chinese timber frames are every bit as refined and complex as their more familiar Japanese counterparts. There are stylistic and structural differences between the two traditions but it is obvious they share a common lineage and most historians believe that the technology was introduced to Japan by Buddhist monks from China. Korean and southeast Asian timber framing also show the same relationship to Chinese roots.