
Lee Kang-hyo 'Onggi Master'
Lee Kang-hyo works clay in his South Korean studio, building enormous onggi pots using a traditional Korean throwing technique that lets him scale up to man-sized vessels, then decorating them with the buncheong method: brushing on white slip in loose, deliberate strokes. The film follows him constructing three of these giant pots over five days, from wet clay to a firing and glazing finish that turns into a burst of color and texture. Lee talks about the pieces as an extension of his search for what he calls a beautiful life, and his family and studio routine appear alongside the technical work, grounding the craft in daily practice rather than presenting it as pure spectacle. His pots hang in the Victoria & Albert Museum, the British Museum, the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, the Art Institute of Chicago, and Italy's International Ceramic Museum, evidence of how far this specific regional technique has traveled. The soundtrack is Samulnori, Korean percussion built around four instruments, kwaengwari, jing, janggu, and buk, playing under the throwing and firing scenes.