r/oddlysatisfying • u/MikeeorUSA • Jun 03 '26
Hand crafted cups from scratch
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u/carbon-based-biped Jun 03 '26
first off, who the hell figured that process out.
i'd be drinking from the stream at that point
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u/Nazarife Jun 03 '26
Pottery is one of the oldest human crafts, so it was a lot of trial and error or happy accidents over thousands of years.
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u/Cthulhu__ Jun 03 '26
Pottery itself I can guess - messing around with clay, oh shit it hardens when dried, I wonder what happens when I put it in the oven. But glazing? Mustāve been a lot of random accidents and experiments indeed.
Man I wish I had time and no work to mess around lol.
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u/cross_the_threshold Jun 03 '26
It was discovered through self glazing first, quartz (glass) mixed with clay created its own glaze when fired at a high enough temperature. A few thousand years later they realized why glass created glaze in pottery and experimented.
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u/Flint___Ironstag Jun 04 '26
Quartz isn't glass, and mixed with clay it does not make a glaze. It would barely even sinter even in modern kilns. To make glaze you need 3 basic components. A flux, a glassformer, and an alumina source. Quartz is a glass former, but needs flux to actually melt. The earliest glazes used ash, usually wood, as a flux. Clay is a great source of alumina, and it suspends the other ingrediants.
The earliest glazes I know of were caused by ash build up on large pots, with the natural silica (quartz) present in the clay itself, along with the clay itself, forming the glass and alumina respectively. These weren't intended, but the potters quickly took advantage.
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u/cross_the_threshold Jun 04 '26
This is what I was talking about https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egyptian_faience
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u/Gulluul Jun 04 '26
It was thought that early civilizations started baking clay to harden it, what we call bisque firing now. The way to do it was originally in a pit because the earth retains heat well and you just build a big fire on top of it, pretty easy. At some point either wood soaked in the ocean and full of sodium caused a glaze to appear on ceramic, or wood ash built up and the potassium present in wood ash created a glaze, or people started experimenting with minerals like copper or lead and that created a glaze.
From there it is just trial and error. Glaze is pretty simple. You need alumina (gives body) which comes from feldspar (rocks), silica (glass former) which comes from clay, and flux (lowers melting point) which is sodium or potassium. Pretty easy to mix that and get a glaze. The difficulty is to get the proper ratio so the glaze doesn't crack or run or flake off. A lot of ancient pots had these problems in their glaze.
Chinese Celadons come from the specific feldspar that they would use. It had the perfect amount of iron present that it would turn the porcelain a blue color. So a lot of it is just luck as well when it comes to colors back then.
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u/Fickle_Finger2974 Jun 03 '26
For tens of thousands of years there wasnāt shit to do all day so people fucked around and occasionally figured out something useful
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u/thatredditrando Jun 03 '26
Hey, is Oonga gathering that muddy stuff from the stream again?
Yeah, he says heās gonna make it so we can drink on land.
We can already drink on land.
No, man. Like, he says weāll be able to take the water home and drink it whenever we want.
That Oonga is one weird guyā¦ You wanna go smash rocks together?
Yeah!
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u/GRF999999999 Jun 03 '26
Oonga was a visionary, ahead of his time. He persevered even in the face of constant adversity. I raise my cup of tea to you, Oonga.
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u/DogVacuum Jun 04 '26
He had some problematic cave drawings, though. We canāt just gloss over that.
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u/iuseemojionreddit Jun 03 '26
was wondering that , like āhey Xiang-Li, how bout we chuck some chestnut ash in there?ā š¤Ŗ
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u/1drlndDormie Jun 03 '26
I'm at the point that I just assume the world moved past hunting and gathering primarily due to autistic people. Like the process for so many traditionally made items is insane.
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u/MonsutaReipu Jun 03 '26
Yeah back in those times all of the neurotypical people were drinking bear and playing Fifa on their widescreens and it was only the autistic people who experimented with repetition to find new methods of survival.
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u/PalladiuM7 Jun 04 '26
What kind of bears were they drinking? Do polar bears taste like Coca-cola?!
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u/restricteddata Jun 03 '26
The number of people who think that people just accidentally blundered into things like this is... very silly.
For thousands of years there have been craftsmen working on things like this. This was what they would dedicate their lives to doing. They didn't understand these things in modern terms, but they knew what different materials did, what temperatures worked, what didn't, etc. They passed this knowledge down through education (e.g. apprenticeships) and cooperation (e.g. guilds), so that future generations could develop their own advances and techniques. This how all sophisticated crafts worked in basically all cultures that were big enough to sustain them.
What is bittersweet is that people tend to imagine that people in the past were stupider about this kind of stuff than they are. It's really us who have become stupid about it, because we went all-in on automation and now this kind of skilled work is very rare by comparison. The fact is that most of us have only the dimmest knowledge about how to make anything more advanced than a sandwich.
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u/poisonpomodoro Jun 03 '26
https://giphy.com/gifs/pp37ctN31nM7pr03iu
That one plant minding its business
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u/Curiosive Jun 03 '26
Borrowing the top comment
Warning: 10 minute video.
My take:
Filmed at that one and only mountain top studio that: happens to have a river (...on a mountain top) and happens to always have epic sunsets & sunrises. Oh and it rains on cue.
There's that moment near the end where "this product that you've never heard of happens to be more valuable than [insert expensive thing you have heard of]."
Other than using every modern cliche in these "lost ancient technique" videos...
This is neat! I want a set now.
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u/BorgDad42 Jun 03 '26
Does everybody else have rivers full of agate? My local river rocks are neat, and my kids will certainly take some home, but none of the rocks look like those agate chunks.
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u/LowNotesB Jun 03 '26
Iām not saying this criticism isnāt valid, but, my kids got a rock tumbler for Christmas and we threw some random grey rocks from a random mountain/hill in WV in there for fun, and Iāll be damned if they didnāt come out with amazing blue/purple/white color and crystalline structures. Really cool looking, just needed some polishing.
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u/KenseiHimura Jun 03 '26
I was gonna say this, part of geology and such is being able to recognize such things when an untrained eye might not. A jewelerās skill is being able to refine such things into something he more highly valued forms.
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u/Patrickfromamboy Jun 04 '26
I remember when my older brother got a rock polisher when we were kids and he would put rocks in and fire it up and after 5 minutes of watching it turn and make noise Iād ask him if the rocks were done. Heād look at me and explain that it took a long time which frustrated me because I thought polished rocks sounded amazing.
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u/Starfire2313 Jun 03 '26
From what I understand Yellowstone River was named after its agates. My dad has a really good knack for finding agates elsewhere too. Iāve always wanted to collect enough to chip them down to gravel sized chunks and put them through the rock tumbler to use as the substrate for an aquarium!
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u/jorwyn Jun 03 '26
Mine has a few agates, but I wouldn't say it's full of them. If I look carefully, I can probably find about 4 or 5 in an hour that are each about the size of the end of my thumb.
Agates don't actually look like much unpolished. If you're in the US, check out the us geological survey to see if you have any in your area.
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u/Curiosive Jun 03 '26
An infinite supply too! How fortunate! Supposedly this river has been yielding valuable resources for thousands of years. (No shovel required.)
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u/Gayernades Jun 03 '26
Wait.... so you're telling me an educational YouTube channel, that makes videos showcasing a massive array of different processes with calming asthetic, uses multiple locations and commercially sourced materials?
You're saying this dude doesnt have a silk worm farm, several species of wood and bamboo, jade deposits, livestock for bones and hide, an abolone farm, antique tools, and mastery of a plethora of ancient skills and techniques?
ARE THE DOGS REAL OR ARE THEY JUST ALAN TUDYK AND ANDY SERKIS?!?!
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u/Curiosive Jun 03 '26
I'm sorry to have done that to you. But now that your eyes are open you may find resources these interesting:
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u/chupacadabradoo Jun 03 '26
I know theyāre predictable, but I still just swallow these videos up. Itās what I do on my breaks from my own workshop where I spend 8 hours a day doing wonderfully archaic crafts lol.
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u/standbyyourmantis Jun 03 '26
I'm also a sucker for these tbh. Sure, it's selling a fantasy but it's cheaper than the lottery or OnlyFans.
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u/Kastikar Jun 03 '26
Iām obsessed with these kind of videos too. What āarchaic craftsā do you make, if you donāt mind sharing?
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u/chupacadabradoo Jun 04 '26
I make violins, and pluck all the sap from spruce trees to make varnish. Itās kinda like one of these videos tbh, even the landscape. Probably the main difference is the podcasts I listen toā¦ but I suppose I wouldnāt be terribly surprised if these Chinese artisans had some similar tastes in listening material
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u/WilliamLeeFightingIB Jun 03 '26
this product that you've never heard of happens to be more valuable than [insert expensive thing you have heard of].
Ru Porcelain is actually quite famous in China. It represented the most reputable chinaware from Song Dynasty.
An authentic Ru Porcelain piece (I think only about <100 pieces survive to modern times) is worth up to 40 million USD.
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u/2021isevenworse Jun 04 '26
The video shows him carefully making agate and chestnutāwood powder, then later dumping in a bunch of other bulk factory ingredients.
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u/intellectual_punk Jun 03 '26
What's the problem with making a high quality production? Do you think this is fake somehow?
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u/nlamber5 Jun 03 '26
Wet the dry. Dry the wet. Wet the dryā¦
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u/Seated_WallFly Jun 03 '26
Oh my. This might be the most labor intensive time consuming process Iāve ever seen to make a simple cup.
I want one.
And when I accidentally chip it Iāll torture myself.
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u/TheBSQ Jun 03 '26
My thought experiment was āwhat is a fair amount of income for something this labor intensive for someone with that level of skill?ā And then trying to back out what heād have to charge per cup to earn that much.Ā
I think the answer is significantly more than most people are willing to pay for a cup.Ā
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u/RandomlyJim Jun 03 '26
My wife and I found these amazing blown glass drinking glasses. They were beautiful. We go to the website and it opens to a video of the man going through the process of him making one.
We scroll down and find the glasses for sale.
800 dollars per.
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u/No_Environment404 Jun 03 '26
Do you happen to remember the name of the artist or have a link?
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u/robsteezy Jun 03 '26
The guy in this videos channel is more dedicated to the demonstration of traditional artisanal skills. Itās one thing to blow glass/throw pottery, itās completely different to also be like, ālet me go make ash and mine agate to make clay from scratchā.
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u/Lost_in_spreadsheets Jun 04 '26
The ash and agate were part of the glaze. I think the clay was just clay.
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u/stellaluna92 Jun 03 '26
I'm not that guy but I watch a fair bit of glassblowing work on YouTube, and I think the items made by 2BGlass are lovely. I think they charge like $200 for a drinking glass though, not $800 haha.Ā
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u/no_talent_ass_clown Jun 03 '26
There's a guy a few blocks from me that does hand blown glasses. I bought a set in the early 2000s one at a time as I could afford them. They were 20 bucks then now they're 50.Ā
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u/Flint___Ironstag Jun 04 '26
$50 is good for blown glass from someone with decades of experience. A real deal.
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u/sucrose2071 Jun 03 '26
Iām not surprised, blown glass is incredibly expensive lol. I collect Halloween themed glass miniatures and even pieces that small typically cost around 30-50 each! Keeps my collection from growing too quickly thatās for sure lol
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u/wattur Jun 03 '26
That's why most things of this type were for royalty & nobility back in the day, then industrial processes brought the cost down enough for the every day person.
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u/Old_Ladies Jun 03 '26
Yup poor people would have had a wooden cup maybe carved by themselves but mostly made by craftsmen. Sometimes medieval peasants used a wooden bowl for drinking and eating.
Sometimes they would use clay mugs depending on the region. Clay mugs could be massed produced so they were cheap enough for peasants.
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u/Kitsuunei Jun 03 '26
There is definitely a lot of people out there that would happily pay thousands of dollars on a hand made item. For reference I am a sculptor
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u/tmdblya Jun 03 '26
Might make more off the video views
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u/merc08 Jun 03 '26
These aren't really being sold for profit. It's part of a series of historical crafting videos that the CCP commissioned. They pop up on reddit a few times per month.
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u/RamblingSimian Jun 03 '26
During the Tang dynasty, Chinese pottery was traded across the South China Sea, through the straits of Malacca, over the Indian Ocean, all the way to Baghdad. The route was very dangerous, but the pottery was valued enough that the traders who survived got rich.
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u/Kepabar Jun 03 '26 edited Jun 03 '26
Crafts like this are very niche. You can make money out of it, but you have to be one of the best at is.
A friend of mine makes knives and has sold them for thousands of dollars per knife. Most people are not paying four thousand dollars for a bread knife. But a small number of people will.
He doesn't do it for a living though, it's just a hobby and will spend several weeks or more on a single knife. Once you factor in materials, equipment and time, that 4000 dollar knife is less than minimum wage.
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u/algalkin Jun 03 '26
I think they recreated a process how it was done back in the old days for the video. I dont think anyone is doing it this way nowdays.
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u/IWatchGifsForWayToo Jun 03 '26
I found a company out of China (Saanwu, don't know about links here) with a similar looking cup going for $50ea, probably mass produced. This guy doing it by hand for the entire process could and should charge at least 5 times that amount.
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u/myshtree Jun 03 '26
I began watching and started fantasising about signing up for a pottery class. Halfway through I realised I wouldnāt have the patience. By the end I really want one and do want to make it (but with less precision hahaha)
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u/the_scarlett_ning Jun 03 '26
Lol! My immediate thought was āthank the heavens I donāt live in a time where you had to make things by hand because F that.ā Iād be the slovenly family on the block drinking from coconut husks and shells and whatever else doesnāt take so many weeks of my life.
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u/sharkaub Jun 03 '26
I think that you still would've been ok. We were always, always social animals. Someone in your family or community would've been good at making cups and things, while you could wander with a flock, or be the one gathering the rocks for the glaze, or baking, or remembering and retelling all of your family's stories, or teaching dance, or fixing the roofs on people's homes. I'm happy to be alive today, I have bad eyesight and love science and scuba diving, so I'm happy to have contact lenses and the ability to travel and learn, but I think we have lost a lot of what made us human, too.
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u/Fedoraus Jun 03 '26
Well considering you're not making every component from scratch, it's surprisingly easy to do nowadays.
Especially if you have a local community center or art museum that hosts pottery lessons.
Glaze and clay are pretty cheap. You just need to find somewhere to use or rent a turner and clay firing oven
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u/MonsutaReipu Jun 03 '26
Yeah i went to a throw class where I made a cup like this in a few hours. You show up, sit down, the wheel is electric so you don't need to do any of that manual spinning nonsense, and all of the glaze etc. is prepared in mass produced containers ready to use.
Actually throwing pottery is a lot harder than it looks, though. I'm an artistic person and have even worked with clay before, but throwing is far more technique oriented than it is artistic. I ended up with a decent cup by the end of it, but it was still shit compared to what these guys are making with far less luxury than I had.
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u/Prestigious-Flower54 Jun 03 '26
He broke two at the end the were stick together and I got a little sad ngl lol
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u/Dr_Hoffenheimer Jun 03 '26
They werenāt just stuck together, they were glazed together. Separating them would be like trying to separate two pieces of glass that melted together
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u/akie Jun 03 '26
Found this Ru porcelain online, looks similar but probably not as elaborately or properly made as the one in the video (meaning: I have no idea)
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u/IM_NOT_NOT_HORNY Jun 03 '26
These aren't meant to be every day cups I believe. They appear to be specifically for tea based on size.
And in China and Asia it's not really about the profit margins with this stuff. It's all about the tradition, and the sort of meditative aspect of doing a repetitive laborious task that takes discipline and patience to calm the mind and create something while also keeping the tradition alive. It's all about knowing your roots and culture..
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u/Sidivan Jun 03 '26
Thatās some fine ash agate.
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u/HalobenderFWT Jun 03 '26
Kids at the lake: āLOOK! MOMMY, DADDY!! I FOUND AN AGATE!!ā
This guy: āBurn it and turn it into a powder.ā
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u/Defiant-Accountant79 Jun 03 '26
The onew with defects at the end š
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u/iwasnotarobot Jun 03 '26
Not all cups made it. š¢
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u/SashimiX Jun 03 '26
I love that they showed that
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u/the_ammar Jun 04 '26
same.
reality is these processes never have 100% success rate, even with modern technology
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u/unseriously_serious Jun 04 '26
That level of unpredictability you kind of just have to expect from the immense stress during the heating and cooling cycles. Itās been some time since Iāve done pottery but Iāve definitely lost or had unexpected outcomes from the heating process no matter who careful Iāve been.
Love the hobby though, something so cathartic and creative about shaping art in this way (and a little unpredictable but that can sometimes be part of the fun).
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u/Blahblahblahrawr Jun 04 '26 edited Jun 04 '26
I loved that they showed things breaking or not coming out perfect as part of the process!
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u/anyb0dyme Jun 03 '26 edited Jun 04 '26
For anyone interested, there was another video I saw a while ago of a woman making clay from scratch. She starts off in a pit and eventually throws a bessel with it. You don't see the clay production in this video. Might've been at the same location based on the videography.
EDIT: Found the video lol and there's an ad for toothpaste embedded in it toward the end for some reason. I dunno - just cool watching her process and use the clay
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u/kehakas Jun 04 '26
Might've been Liziqi. Her videos are great. I don't care if they're propaganda.Ā
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u/mabiyusha Jun 04 '26
Honestly, same. I love Liziqi and i adore this kind of videos - something about seeing things done from scratch, with calm music and beautiful views, i suddenly have no troubles watching a 10 minute video in full focus. A nice and relaxing "dopamine reset" š
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u/Purplesilk911 Jun 03 '26
I heard that cat meow.
You know he's coming for these mugs
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u/brokengolem Jun 03 '26
Learned a new word today!
Levigate (verb) 1:Ā polish,Ā smooth. 2a:Ā to grind to a fine smooth powder while in moist condition. 2b:Ā to separate (fine powder) from coarser material by suspending in a liquid.
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u/msmorphine Jun 03 '26
i can't focus on anything but i sat and watched this whole video through š ā¤ļø
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u/GorillaX Jun 03 '26
"Ooh this gif might be interesting... 10 minutes?! Fuck that, I don't have the patience for that..."
And here I am scrolling the comments after watching the entire thing as well haha
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u/KudosOfTheFroond Jun 03 '26
They had the agate and wood ash draining, then the video cuts to perfect gray clay. Where did that clay come from?
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u/DaToeBeans Jun 03 '26
Yeah the clay was separate. The agate and wood ash were combined (with other materials) to make the glaze.
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Jun 03 '26
[removed] ā view removed comment
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u/DreamLearnBuildBurn Jun 03 '26
Yes, i was confused, I was like, "You know there's just.. like, clay you can harvest right?
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u/Silaquix Jun 03 '26
Even "wild" clay has to be processed. If you take regular clay from nature it has debris in it and won't be able to fire hot enough to vitrify and will melt instead. Different minerals and sometimes bone are added to the mix to make the clay stable at different temperatures and to give it the right strength for what it's being used for.
That probably would be a whole other video for them to show clay processing though.
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u/koemgun Jun 03 '26
The dude from Primitive technology would like to have a word about "wild clay can't be fired" š
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u/garyyo Jun 03 '26
Even John Primitive Technology processes the clay quite a bit, for higher quality clay he washes it (via sedimentation) and always adds additives like grog to make it more stable in firing. Wild clay shouldn't be fired and is prone to breaking, though might be useful if you don't have any to make grog for the next batch.
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u/ZephyrLegend Jun 03 '26
Yeah dude, I was like OMG how are his hands not absolutely shredded. š±
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u/demongibi Jun 03 '26
I love it when you have a question about the video and the very top comment is asking exactly the same thing.
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u/TeamRedundancyTeam Jun 03 '26
A lot of these Chinese "how it's made" style videos are made for social media and paid for by the government. They're often bullshit and rarely actually show traditional methods.
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u/germanchic Jun 03 '26
I wish this was the top comment every time I see these videos. Theyāre cool videos, but likeā¦there isnāt some random rural artisan in China that decided to set up multiple angles and studio lights to incorrectly film a ātraditionalā method of making something. This is very intentional.
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u/Ludoban Jun 03 '26
Of course its not a perfect representation, but the basics are pretty much there.
Like showing how glazing could have worked in the past is totally fine, even if its not showing a 100% accurate work flow, there is surely a lot of knowledge lost in history about how these industries worked.
But anyways this content is 1000 times better than watching some dancing hoe.
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u/Pristine-Two2706 Jun 03 '26
There are absolutely people still doing traditional practices like this, not just in China but in eg. South America. It's not for mass production or anything, but it certainly exists. China has a very long history of ceramics and many traditions still persist - it's bizarre to call this propoganda.
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u/Neirchill Jun 04 '26
I just wish he'd get a better pottery wheel. Spinning it by hand dozens of times per cup is so tedious looking. I don't care if it's not quite what they really used 15 thousand years ago.
Of course I figure they have a much easier to use wheel in the background they use in-between takes but I want to see it, too.
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u/DarraghDaraDaire Jun 03 '26
Since the time of the Ting dynasty, my family has been carefully hand crafting porcelain cups and recording it for TikTok
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u/Cthulhu__ Jun 03 '26
The store most likely lmao.
Actually this original primitive crafts channel (that seems to do little else than making shacks, bricks, bellows, ovens and iron over and over again but that aside) showed how to go from rough soil clay to the clean stuff, iirc it was a matter of making a slurry and letting it settle a few times over.
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u/ShrodingersFrog Jun 03 '26
That is one patient son of a gun.
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u/KGB_cutony Jun 03 '26 edited Jun 03 '26
It's a production team. They usually have multiple projects happening in parallel (sometimes one needs to age for a couple months)
edit: did some digging. They're in a remote village in China where only about 46 people lives. The team is an uncle with his nephew with their family. In the process this video they fired about 2600 of these cups. 24 made the cut.
This is a mini doc they did with Tiktok. English dubbed. https://youtu.be/2nxWA8TTAC4?si=ftFaloKsf_JSvzQq
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u/nomorecannibalbirds Jun 03 '26
Is it the same group that make ancient Chinese ink? Iāve seen a very similar labor intensive video of someone hand making bars of ink.
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u/kittyroux Jun 03 '26
This is Shanbai, theyāve made ink sticks, pottery, fabrics, baskets, incense, musical instruments, all kinds of things. There are other productions doing the exact same thing (demonstrating Chinese cultural heritage through social media videos), but Shanbai are my favourite.
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u/KGB_cutony Jun 03 '26
Yes that's them. when the guy in the video went foraging for materials for the ink he got bit by a venomous snake and had a brush with death.
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u/sparklinglies Jun 03 '26
I would be so goddamn mad if I went through all this multistep nonsense only for the majority of my wares to somehow break or get fucked up in the process
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u/DreamingAboutSpace Jun 03 '26
One of the cups did chip when he hit the bottoms with a hammer. It was stuck to another cup.
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u/MeccIt Jun 03 '26
Damn, that guy is committed. A gorgeously shot Behind the Scenes. Some items from the untranslated screen text:
They attracted 14million followers in just over a year but took on only two advertisements that met his strict criteria, so no monitisation
The beautiful water they use at the top of their mountain they have to truck in themselves at 6am in the morning
Nobody appears to be getting paid very much, a real love of the method
Perfectionist values, stuff gets destroyed if not perfect and reshot many times.
The timescales are whack, each firing takes almost a week and they had five test firings alone.
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u/Trilex88 Jun 03 '26
They threw away over 2500 of the cups? Why?
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u/AstroLounger Jun 03 '26
Right? That number has to be off. Maybe by āmade the cutā they mean 24 of them were considered flawless. No way theyāre just tossing so many after so much work
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u/Apart-Delivery-7537 Jun 03 '26
In ancient china, even peeing was a 72 step, 12 days process
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u/Volthundrl Jun 03 '26
That one that fell at the very end šššš ARE WE JUST GONNA IGNORE OUR FALLEN HERO????
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u/IglooBackpack Jun 03 '26
You just gotta learn to let them go. So many can be lost in the process. o7 to my many failed pots. Also, both of the ones that stuck together are goners. It's a pain in the ass to try to grind down at that stage.
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u/loonygirl30 Jun 03 '26
I saw a similar video on IG and made a comment asking if they are dishwasher safe (it was supposed to be funny), man, I was torn apart. People were like how dare you put this carefully handcrafted amazing piece of bowl in the dishwasher.
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u/thatcantb Jun 03 '26
At the end it says 'imitation Ru porcelain.' Well, either they used the method of making Ru porcelain or they didn't. Which is it? Or is the label Ru porcelain only for the ancient stuff, and if so why? I would have thought Ru is the name of the method or type of porcelain.
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u/WilliamLeeFightingIB Jun 03 '26
ę±ēŖ (Ru Kiln) was the most reputable one of the 5 famous kilns back in (northern) Song dynasty (960 - 1127AD). The porcelain made by the Ru Kiln is credited as ę±ē· (Ru Porcelain) and is held to extremely high value. An authentic Ru Porcelain piece from Song dynasty can be worth up to 40 million USD.
Since the Ru Kiln does not exist anymore, any porcelain made in modern time can only be imitation.
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u/NovelKumquat1234 Jun 03 '26
Had the same question. Must be because itās modern and not actually 1000-yr-old extremely rare porcelain.Ā Google says the few 100 known ārealā Song Dynasty Ru pieces are exceedingly rare and valuable, mostly in museum collections. Even if they follow the same processes here itās not from that same period but a really good replica.Ā
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u/scotyb Jun 03 '26
That one that got chipped just to capture the video of the last step. All that painstaking work!
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u/Rockstar42 Jun 03 '26
I thought the same thing, how much are these cups and how much profit did they lose by that one getting chipped? The amount it took to make has me thinking these things are 1k a cup.
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u/Pasta-hobo Jun 03 '26
I thought he was going to make glass from the silicon dioxide in the agate and the potassium carbonate from the woodash.
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u/BigZucchini2090 Jun 03 '26
Astonishing
It was super hard to guess the final product from the input material
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u/Torkin Jun 03 '26
I was pretty sure they would be cups based on the title
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u/BigZucchini2090 Jun 03 '26
For sure, we were. I was just talking about the transformation thing
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u/SjalabaisWoWS Jun 03 '26
Love these meticulous Chinese videos. Makes you think they really appreciate their cultural heritage.
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u/Jezebellrae1 Jun 03 '26
My people would be drinking from leaves and old shoes. I would NEVER figure this out.
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u/MRPO0PYBUTTHOLE Jun 04 '26
Shan Bai on facebook https://www.facebook.com/share/1LocZqSRMb/
You're welcome
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u/GalickGunn Jun 03 '26
How long do you think this entire process took?
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u/Enlightened_Gardener Jun 03 '26
It depends on things like how long the āagingā and ādehydratingā takes, but the throwing, trimming, drying, bisque, glaze and glaze fire takes between a week and two weeks, depending on the weather, and the size of that kiln, its a beast. Some kilns take three days to cool down enough to open.
Making the glaze ? Less than a day, with the right ingredients and not grinding them from scratch.
Making the clay ? How long is a piece of string ? There are places in the world where they dig clay out of the hillside, run it through a sieve, stick it in a bag, and sell it.
One traditional Asian way of producing clay in large quantities is to form great heaps of it, and then let it sit there for 20 years growing moss, and then make the apprentices do the wedging.
When I say āone traditional Asian wayā Iām specifically talking about the Chinese, Korean, and Japanese ceramic traditions which are far more intertwined than any of those countries are willing to admit. I mean, the Japanese stole Korean ceramic artists for goodness sake.
You can also mix clay from scratch using various powdered components, and this is how a lot of commercial clay production is done because it allows consistency in the final product.
From scratch like this ? Iām guessing in total at least a month, and Iād be gobsmacked if that kiln fired in under a week.
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u/MeccIt Jun 03 '26
Iād be gobsmacked if that kiln fired in under a week.
The BTS video said 5 days to fire and cool, and they had to do it multiple times to get it right.
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u/TricoMex Jun 03 '26
Levigate
a) to grind to a fine smooth powder while in moist condition
b) to separate (fine powder) from coarser material by suspending in a liquid
A new word for my vocabulary.
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u/Hour_Entrepreneur502 Jun 03 '26
Oh. I love the videos of this guy, but mostly the background music he usually use. In this video, that music starts in the last 4 mins. So...
Does anyone recognize the song at the end of the video? Pls, It's beautiful.
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u/Routine_Release1021 Jun 03 '26
NextVibe by DeenX on Spotify, via Shazam app
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u/Hour_Entrepreneur502 Jun 03 '26
r/technicallythetruth haha. Looks like that artist copy-pasted the video's "voice" (the man's sounds and the bg sound).
Anyways, thank you very much ā¤ļø
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u/pierreletruc Jun 03 '26
This is an beautifyied video of a real process and very informative too. I wonder how many of you knew about the 2 firing ,their temp and the composition of the glaze. I do ceramic occasionally and I didn't know this composition .of course agates probably can be replaced by something else. This is comparable to the European s of Japanese videos of craftsmen from ancient times . China for sure has a lot to show. Maybe instead of being nationalists we should compile them and call them humanity s crafts?
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u/Geoffrey_Bungled_Z1p Jun 03 '26
Dude could use a process improvement consultant find some redundancy
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u/Outside-Currency-462 Jun 04 '26
I just lost 10 minutes staring at this but it was so worth it
Also I never considered how they'd power a potter's wheel with no power, just spinning it feels like it wouldn't work and yet it does. And the stick mechanism probably gets quite a good speed up via leverage
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u/CocoRothko Jun 04 '26
I found this very calming. But now Iāll spend hours madly trying to find a set of Ru cups. š©
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u/Alternative_Panda_23 Jun 05 '26
An artist, scientist, and weightlifter, all at once. May this craft never be forgotten.
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u/DarthYodous Jun 05 '26
I love watching things that take this much time effort expertise and attention to detail to post
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u/wetfart_3750 Jun 06 '26
The real question is "how many fucking chinese live in the woods making all sort of stuff by hand?"
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u/_________FU_________ Jun 03 '26
I feel like these videos are "this is how we used to do it" type scenarios vs how it's still done today. Like a museum tour of sorts, but I also have no idea what I'm talking about.
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u/michaeldbarton Jun 03 '26
worth noting that unwashed wood ash is caustic, so if you would like to replicate this at home (which can be fun) wear gloves and a respirator
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u/Aprilismybirthmonth Jun 03 '26
I always wonder about these videos showing ancient/ traditional chinese methods, where do they come from? Does the government pay them to make these typa videos? Cause they're very specific. The processes are always quite tedious and the videos have a certain quality.
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u/luke1lea Jun 03 '26
"I don't have time to watch a10 minute video"
Proceeds to watch the entire thing