Shudan - a conversation by hand

Shudan refers to the intimate communion between the craftsman's hands and his materials.

This short (2 minute) film was edited out of a much longer film Brad Schaffer and I are working on at present. I put this one together as an entry in the The Power of Making exhibition that's being held at the Victoria and Albert Museum, in London, over the following few months.


In it I demonstrate Yuwake, a traditional hot water casting procedure. The subsequent forging, yama-oroshi or "pounding down the mountain", of the water cast button transforms it into a tsuba. A guard for a Japanese sword.


I first came across the term, Shudan, on the website of a manufacturer of fine Igo equipment. 


This is what they had to say; 

In old days, clamshell was shaped one by one using this handmade traditional tool and craftsman finished it as truly artistic Go stone. Go was called "Shudan", which literally means 'hand conversation'. Craftsman and stone interact with each other from the beginning of manufacturing process.

In old days, clamshell was shaped one by one using this handmade traditional tool and craftsman finished it as truly artistic Go stone. Go was called "Shudan", which literally means 'hand conversation'. Craftsman and stone interact with each other from the beginning of manufacturing process.

A load of old balls or music to your ears?

No, not CGI. It is apparently real as is the sound. It's funny how when confronted by something as time consuming as this there's an immediate tendency to finds ways to minimise it's effect. There seems to be a discussion in the blogosphere about whether the sound is real etc. If any people would go to this sort of trouble and devote so much time to getting something just right it would be the Japanese.

Just thinking further about many of the responses to the Docomo cellphone ad (the wooden ball running down the track in the woods). I think it's a sad reflection of our present cynicism with creative media that so much of the discussion is about how the whole thing could be effectively faked.

From suggestions that the sound was added in, that the wooden track is actually only one short bit but reshot from different angles to the whole thing being CGI. Perhaps this level of devotion is threatening. Perhaps we feel the need to dismiss amazing efforts like this because they remind us what we might achieve ourselves....if we just put in the effort and devotion too.

I don't care if this isn't entirely "real"...I want to keep it in my imagination as an ideal, and one I want to keep living by.

More about the ad  here

Cornel Schneider - devoted to realism.

This remarkable piece of carving is the latest work by the Swiss carver, Cornel Schneider. His utter devotion to realism never fails to astonish me. This grumpy toad on a lotus leaf is actually carved from a single piece of box wood and features acrylic "droplets of water". As life-like as the toad is, and he really does seem to be a grumpy fellow...the toad not Cornel ;-), I'm particularly drawn to the understated delicacy of the leaf and those beads of  water. Lovely!

If you'd like to see a few more images of this piece you'll find some on the Iron Brush forum, here.

You can also see more of Cornel's work on his own website, here;  http://www.cornelschneider.ch/