Sangiri Robot Figure No.1 — Bizen Ware

A cute robot assembled with bolts and nuts from parts made in Bizen ware. For a shelf at home.

Shibaoka Tosendo, a Bizen ware kiln, has been supported by its customers for more than a hundred years since it was founded in 1912.
We hope you will enjoy the complex keshiki that comes of firing in a wood kiln.

About the colours
[Sangiri]
A large quantity of charcoal is heaped onto the pieces inside the kiln at over 1,200°C. The gas given off as the charcoal burns reacts with the iron in the clay, and a range of colours appears.
Over a red-brown base come rainbow-like patterns, black, grey and blue — every one of these colours held within a single piece.

[Goma]
The kiln is fuelled with pine. The pine burns down to ash, is carried up by the flame and falls over the pieces.
That ash melts in the kiln at over 1,200°C and comes out as the yellow of a natural glaze.
Colour and texture differ with where a piece stood in the kiln and how the flame reached it: some run thick and glassy-smooth, some are a matt yellow and rough to the touch, some keep black grains of ash.

[Hidasuki]
Rice straw is wrapped around the piece and it is fired so that the flame does not touch it; the body turns pale and the marks left by the straw come out red.
The balance of white and red shifts with how much straw, how it was wound and how the flame entered, producing a delicate keshiki.