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Essay

Honing appreciation

By Kit Pancoast Nagamura

Third-generation blacksmith Nobuyuki Ikegami, Vulcan-like, manages fire with powerful forearms and fingers the size of cigars, fashioning tools known worldwide for excellence. He barely fits in the three-mat office where he conducts business, and where I went to admire his range of hand-forged steel tools: slender knives for carving violin bridges, all-purpose wood-handled workhorses, and mokume gane chisels nearly too elegant to use.

I longed to see how such tools were made and to watch him at work, and kindly he agreed. His neighbors suffer the noise from his forge only during early morning hours, so on a brisk fall day, when soot from the forge seemed at home in the air, I returned and stood outside the workroom amongst bags of charcoal and coke.

The workroom was stacked and strewn with scraps of metal from as far back as the Kamakura period, and at its heart the mouth of the forge glowered with heat. Every inch of the place was blackened by decades of soot. There was a narrow well for the bladesmith to stand in, flanked by anvil and pressing machine, but with no room for error. He worked in a mesmerizing rhythm and I think he was surprised I stood around watching him hammer, heat, and shape one tool for about an hour.

As he laminated the steel, folding two types of metal into a perfect bond of soft body and hard edge, I asked questions, and distracted him a bit. He made one mis-hit, grimaced, then expertly recovered. I was quiet after that. He then asked me whether I was left-handed or right-handed. "Right," I answered, "but why?" He told me he would fashion the chisel he had worked on all morning for me. He said, apologetically, that it would take several weeks to complete.

What did I do to deserve such a gift, I wondered, and how could I reciprocate? I asked if I could give him a hand-thrown bowl or something like that -- even though I'm still a novice. Okay, he said, ducking his head and smiling.

There are few things more pleasurable than a barter of handmade goods, but this one had the hallmark of puzzling kismet, as though arranged by the fates for a laugh. Somehow I had agreed to receive an expensive and masterfully crafted chisel, which I did not know how to use, and had offered in return inexpert pottery, which surely he had plenty of already.

Nonetheless, several weeks later, feeling a bit foolish, I passed my pottery to Ikegami-san. As he unwrapped the bowls, dwarfed in his blackened hands, he handled each with exquisite care, as though cupping small birds. He ran his finger slowly over the edges, checking the girth and walls, the glaze and places where the kiln flames had alchemized the clay's surface. His hands were blatantly educated, his appraisal unrushed. He seemed pleased and made a part of my soul feel absorbed, and appreciated. By comparison, I was a dullard receiving my chisel, too ignorant to know where to begin an appreciation of it. The chisel rests on my desk, a sharp reminder that I have my work cut out for me.


Shukan ST: December 4, 2009

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