Passions

One of Mondoro's customers visited for a week. She is in the process of developing a dinnerware collection for her stores in America. We were at the factory with this customer for the entire week, creating the pieces in her collection. The owner of the factory is a younger man who is very nice and has continued making ceramics as his profession just like the rest of his family. They live in the part of Hanoi that we call the "ceramic village". This is where his family has been making ceramics for over 300 years. I find that fascinating! His father has been hand throwing ceramics his entire life and is very talented. He has been hand throwing some of the pieces for this new collection of samples. It's amazing to watch him make so many pieces so fast and with such ease. I did ceramics for three years in high school and loved it! I miss getting dirty and making pieces. He can center the clay so fast and with no adjustment on the wheel; it's amazing! It made me a little jealous that he could do it so well, but he has been doing it for so long.

Some of tools that the men were using to make pieces were made for ceramics, while others were just basic everyday items. If a ruler was broken then they would use it to shape and thin out the ceramic piece. It's amazing that it doesn't matter what they use as long as they have the talent. 

 I took a lot of photos of the father and his nephew throwing clay for our customer. This was a fun photo shoot because of how artistic they are and how it all turned out. I'm excited to share them all with you - I hope you enjoy them as much as I do!

It was a lot of fun to watch and participate in the process of the design and making of the customer's ceramic pieces. There was a lot of work to do: from the size, shape, finish, glaze, and the way all 140 items will be made. It will be worth it when she gets them out in all her stores. I was at the factory for nine days straight organizing all the information by doing power point presentations and helping with whatever I could do for the customer. I'm excited to see how this collection ends up when all the samples are done and fired. We were only able to see the first step of many. The pieces that they threw were big in size which is very hard to do on the wheel. (You can see this in the pictures.)  

The son is now planning on taking over the company from his parents. He has built a nice new factory with four floors. The first floor of the factory is where they make the molds, and where they hand throw the pieces. The second floor is the painting floor, where mostly women are hand painting the pieces. There is also a huge walk-in kiln in the back of this floor. The very top floor has another kiln and has more space for making ceramic pieces with molds. The factory has an efficient system with their workers and the many machines that they use. It was neat to be a part of the process, and to see how their workers work every day. They were very nice and so very kind to me. I had one woman offer me some clay that she was throwing into a mold - haha! I didn't know what I would do with it!