Cambodia ceramists stoked [with Japanese assistance]

Saturday, March 20, 2010

Lost art: Iwami Shinsuke explains to ceramists how to improve their products in the Cambodian village of Andong Russey on March 8. KYODO PHOTOS

With Japanese assistance, potters are beginning to recover lost skills

By PUY KEA
The Japan Times

Kyodo News

ANDONG RUSSEY, Cambodia — For generations, the Cambodian village of Andong Russey has been known for its pottery for daily use, such as water containers and food bowls.

A villager removes cups from a kiln.

But as the country plunged into political upheaval and warfare, which ended just about a decade ago, pottery-making skills that had passed from generation to generation in Andong Russey were lost.

Today, only simple, handmade pottery is produced and the products can only fetch a fraction of the price of imports or those produced by foreign companies in Cambodia.

Yukie Yamazaki, 37, a Japanese who first arrived in Cambodia 16 years ago, has been working with the villagers in Andong Russey since last year in a bid to turn the situation around.

Yamazaki said her dream is to turn Andong Russey, located about 90 km northwest of Phnom Penh, into a model ceramic-making community under Japan's "One Village, One Product" concept.

Since Yamazaki launched her project last October, a new kiln has produced hundreds of pieces of ceramics, including jars, jugs, cups, bowls and vases.

Funded by the Nippon Foundation, the Cambodia Traditional Pottery Project is one of Yamazaki's several projects and businesses in Cambodia, which include the NyoNyum (Smile) Magazine and Shop, and a translation service.

Shinsuke Iwami, 45, a Japanese ceramics expert who arrived in Cambodia four months ago, said he is impressed by how quickly the potters in Andong Russey pick up skills.

The villagers learn fast, Iwami said, probably because they have inherited ceramic-making talent from their ancestors.

Uon Pov, 45, a leader of seven Cambodian villagers who have volunteered to work with the Cambodia Traditional Pottery Project, said she is happy to learn from Iwami the skills of using local materials to generate the glaze and color for standardized ceramics.

"This is fantastic and special . . . we do not need to import it," she said.

She said a single piece of her homemade pottery fetches 300 riel to 1,000 riel (¥6.5 to ¥22). At the Yamazaki Shop, pieces carry a price tag of $4 to $5.

Keo Chantha, head of Andong Russey village, said more than 130 of the 363 families in the village work on pottery, and the rest are farmers.

Chuch Phoeung, secretary of state at the Ministry of Culture and Fine Arts and a noted archaeologist himself, said Cambodia has many creative visual arts that have made the country rich in traditional arts and pointed to the famous Angkor Wat temple by way of example.

He said some of the Khmer pottery artifacts found in the country go back as far as 4,200 B.C.

According to Chuch Phoeung, many of the pottery pieces, used as cooking pots and other household utensils, are hand-turned and fired in an open fire with no glaze.

Cambodian potters fire their pots in the open air at a temperature of as low as 700, but pots are fired as high as 1,280 in a Japanese-designed kiln.

Traditional Cambodian pots and wares are not waterproof and cracks occur commonly during firing.

Chuch Phoeung thanks foreign development partners for assistance in redeveloping Cambodian pottery skills.

While Cambodia's tradition and arts are thus preserved, the country still needs to fight illicit trade of Khmer antiques, particularly the looting and trafficking of archaeological pieces.