If you love art and history, you’ll love Nerikomi, a 1,300 years old pottery style originating in Japan.
Unlike other forms of pottery, Nerikomi doesn’t involve painting over the pots once they’re dry. Instead, Nerikomi potters stack up slabs of painted clay one on top of another to create patterns in the clay itself. Once the slabs are stacked together, they’re sliced into tiny slabs to reveal the pattern.
The art is stunning, but it’s also more than a thousand years old, which might make it less appealing to younger generations. That’s why Japanese potter Tomoro Mizuno is giving his Nerikomi pots a modern twist.
Tomoro is a third-generation potter – he was taught pottery and Nerikomi by his father, who in turn learned it for his father. But Tomoro is a young artist with a fresh perspective that he tries to bring into his art. That’s why alongside traditional Nerikomi patterns he’s also making pots with robots, cute animals and funny characters patterns. He’s trying to create pottery that people of his generation and young would appreciate.
And he’s doing something right, because his pottery is incredibly popular across Japan, and he has a huge following on social media, with 175k followers. But that’s not surprising, because his pottery is a real eye-candy, and anybody can find a design of his they love.
