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Making Centuries-Old Pottery with Tomoro Mizuno

This feature is part of #MadeToCreate, a series highlighting our community of entrepreneurs, makers and artisans on Instagram.

(This interview was translated from Japanese.)

Three days — that’s how long it takes Tomoro Mizuno (@tomoro.m) to create one small bowl or sake cup. “It takes about eight hours to make the pattern alone,” he says. Tomoro makes nerikomi pottery, a centuries-old technique that consists of coloring white clay with different oxides and minerals (nerikomi means “kneading” in Japanese) and carefully laying strips into patterns that appear when you slice the clay slab laterally. “My father and grandfather also made nerikomi pottery, so I’ve seen it since I was young,” says Tomoro, who studied pottery and woodworking in school and gradually moved to work full time from his studio in Seto, Japan. He has a steady sale of his intricate designs of wildflowers, pandas and human faces, but it’s still exciting to see people engage with his creations. “I’m always surprised when people have such a reaction to my work,” says Tomoro.

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