John Baymore on fri 1 aug 97
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.......cut......
There has been a tory around for manyyears that Hamada-sensai had such a
long toso and such short legs, that he could not kick his own whel but had
an apprentice do the work.
.........clip.......
Hamada Shoji mostly used a hand wheel, which was turned clockwise. A
large thick hardwood head (from looking at it maybe about 18=22 in dia x =
8=22
thick) with a wooden skirt below to stabilize on the wooden shaft set into
the dirt floor. The wheel was set in the throwing area so that the
whellhead was level with the wooden sitting surface (on which a zabuton was
placed....so his butt was a couple of inches higher than the wheel head
surface.)
Probably had porcelain bearings but not sure about that.....might have been
more modern that that =22under the hood=22 =3Cg=3E. When I turned it, it =
felt
VERY smooth and had a slight faint mechanical clicking like worn out ball
bearings. Wouldn't expect that.... but you never know. It had brass or
bronze ferrules spaced evenly around the perimiter about 2 inches in from
the edge, which were made to accept the end of a long wooden stick which
was used to spin the wheel. The turning action used a precise flip of the
wrist.
Very little momentum available......... it gave slow rotation to the clay
at the end of each =22spinning=22, capturing the gesture of the potters =
hands.
That's also why anything larger than a small piece was done using coil and
throw....... couldn't center or pull large masses of clay easily (not to
mention that the clay from the Kitagoya deposit Hamada used was very sandy
and non-plastic).
There is great footage of him throwing on this wheel in both of the videos
mentioned previously. It is facinating to watch....... very different from
the electric wheel that most Americans are used to.
Best,
..................john
John Baymore
River Bend Pottery
22 Riverbend Way
Wilton, NH 03086 USA
603-654-2752
JBaymore=40Compuserve.com
leelove@millcomm.com on sun 3 aug 97
John Baymore wrote:
original poster wrote:
>> ........clip.......
>> There has been a tory around for manyyears that Hamada-sensai had
>> such a long toso and such short legs, that he could not kick his
>> own whel but had an apprentice do the work.
>
> ........clip.......
and John wrote:
> Hamada Shoji mostly used a hand wheel, which was turned
> clockwise.<...>
Hamada did have help turning his handwheel in his latter years when his
health was declining. Watching him use the handwheel in the film, it
is easy to see that it would be just as easy to have someone else turn
it with the turning stick.
I just put some pictures of my work up. It can be found at:
http://www.millcomm.com/~leelove/ikiru.html
Please excuse the low res of the photos. I went for speed over high
resolution.
Lee in St. Paul
--
/(o\ Akita Club Of America WebPage:
\o)/' http://club.infocom.net/~akita/index.html
Come see some pixs of my Akita Taiko:
' http://www.millcomm.com/~leelove/taiko.html
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