UNESCO Pottery Class – Making Tableware by Hand Pinching
My First Pottery Making Experience
Sponsor: Meguro Board of Education
Organizer: Meguro UNESCO Association
Instructor: Yoshihiko Yasuhara, ceramic artist
Feb. 8 – 29, every Fri. (14:00 – 16:30) at Kochin-yo Studio
The four-session pottery class has started at a studio surrounded by dozens of red camellia trees. The old kiln of the studio was built in 1928 by late Yoshiaki (Kimey) Yasuhara, a renowned potter, who contributed to the establishment of Meguro UNESCO Association. Our instructor is a young potter, Yoshihiko Yasuhara, who is following in family footsteps – those of his grandfather Kimey, and his father Yoshitaka Yasuhara, Professor Emeritus at Tsukuba University.
On the first day, sixteen participants, including the wife of the El Salvador Ambassador and two Korean women studying in a Meguro UNESCO Japanese class, were divided into two groups. Professor Yasuhara, as a special instructor, taught one group. First we learned “hand pinching”. We were supposed to shape a lump of clay, put on a hand-powered lathe, into a bowl or a cup by pinching it upward with our fingers. What I shaped, however, turned out to be a flat dish! We all admired a thin delicate bowl coming out of Ms. Lee’s clay. She had majored in ceramics at a university in Korea, we learned.
On the second day, we made kodai (footring) by chipping the bottom of our clay work. Next week we will learn how to glaze pottery. All the participants, working hard under superb guidance, enjoying each other’s company, are looking forward to the moment when we will see our baked pottery on the final day of the class.
- reported by Michiko Miyamoto, PR Committee