Shoji Hamada - video

I found the decorating process and firing process interesting, they would all work hard to make sure everything went smoothly each time. The firing process took a lot longer than I would have expected it to, so it was interesting to learn about. Hamada made his own brushes from Akita dog hair to use for decorating the pots. To make his glazes he would burn rice into ash and then mix it with water; this was just one way he would make a glaze. When decorating his pots, he was known to use a bamboo or sugarcane pattern. He would use wax to make a resist design for when another glaze was poured over the patterns. Hamada would decorate as the workers would load each piece into the kiln. They would block each door of the kiln with bricks and fine wet sand in order to keep the heat in. Each firing took three days and nights to complete. His workers would work in 4-hour shifts and sleep when they weren’t working. Each side of the kiln would be stoked simultaneously by workers until it would reach the top temperature. Three days after the firing was complete, they could begin chipping away the doors of the chambers to reveal the pottery. Hamada even sketched all of his work so that he could remember all of them.