Wabi-sabi is the Japanese mindset of finding beauty in imperfection. While most of the Western world favors perfection and excelling in competition or comparison to others, traditional Japanese culture celebrates simplicity, naturalness, and imperfections that we can grow to appreciate over time. “Wabi” refers to the beauty found in asymmetric and unbalanced items and “sabi” describes the beauty of aging, celebrating the impermanence of life.
The culture of wabi-sabi is embodied in the aesthetics of Japanese ceramics. One technique involves removing fired pots from the kiln and dipping them in straw or water for a distorted, warped, and crackled effect, which is the embodiment of wabi-sabi in a pottery piece. Intentional irregularity in these ceramic pieces creates one-of-a-kind pots that are admired for their unique forms, marks, and uneven colors.
Hand built Japanese tea bowls have a similar appearance to pinch pots. A pinch pot is a small piece of pottery made by poking a hole in a ball of clay and pinching slowly while turning it in your hands until is formed into an open container with an even thickness on all sides. Learning to create a pinch pot is not just about making a pot. The act of making one can help students understand the consistency of clay and how to control it. Whether someone is pressing their hands into clay for the first time or building an ambitious clay sculpture by attaching hollow forms together, the ability to make a pinch pot is a fundamental skill.
Anyone can make a pinch pot, but it’s not necessarily intuitive for everyone. Students often pinch too hard and too fast, making their form very wide or thin and causing it to collapse. If you don’t get it right away, it can be frustrating. Making a successful pinch pot requires focused attention on the touch and feel on the inside and outside of the form to even out the clay body and smooth out the cracks. Hand building in clay can be a very therapeutic and calming exercise but it also provides the opportunity for taking risks, learning from failures, and starting from scratch by trying it again with a new pinch pot. Clay is very forgiving and can be molded multiple times as long as the clay is kept moist enough to work with.
While the 6th grade artists were learning how to make pinch pots, we had group discussions on struggles and success stories with a little "show-and-tell" of pinch pots using the document camera to share what had been going well and what type of surface texture designs they had tried. Students experimented with imprinting patterns using the back of a pencil or drawing into the clay with tools. Each student created two pinch pots and had the option to create a similar set that related to each other or to try two different concepts with their pair of pots.
To circle the clay project back to the rich history of Japanese ceramics, the students watched a video clip of a tea ceremony where tea is steeped in the traditions of preparation through rituals of presenting the tea while admiring the aesthetic qualities of the ceramic pieces as they enjoy the tea in harmony with each other. Preparing and drinking matcha green tea for a tea ceremony takes years to master. The students reflected on the process and shared observations on how they took their time with each step of the tea ceremony, much like they were creating ceramic pieces with care, patience, and attention to detail.
The 6th grade pinch pots are unique, well-loved, and each carefully shaped by their enthusiastic hands. I love to see my students take pride in their work and feel like they have put forth their best efforts. As the pinch pots are set out to dry for the bisque firing, the students plan their glaze decorations and write self reflections on the process of making their beautifully imperfect pair of pinch pots.
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