“Dorodango, the Japanese Art of Making Mud Balls: Dorodango Author Bruce Gardner Shares the Story of How He Discovered the Japanese Art of Hikaru Dorodango”, Bruce Gardner2019-09-26 (design, Japanese art)⁠:

[Photo essay on making shiny balls of mud.]

Hi there, this is Bruce Gardner. I am out of Albuquerque, New Mexico and my strange superpower is: I am very good at making mud balls, aka hikaru dorodango. I’m taking over the Laurence King blog today to introduce my new book, Dorodango: The Japanese Art of Making Mud Balls…Coming from the words doro, meaning “mud” and dango, a type of Japanese flour cake, hikaru dorodango consists of forming a mud ball by hand. Layers of increasingly fine dirt are added to the surface over the space of days to a point at which the dorodango can be polished to a high sheen (hikaru means “shining”)…I was introduced to hikaru dorodango by a William Gibson essay in Tate Magazine, way back in 2002. I was immediately bowled over by the idea of creating art from such a humble material; I have been creating mud balls ever since.

…Here is an image of a few of my pieces that illustrate the scope of color and texture that is possible with soil gathered from different locations (various parts of New Mexico, in this case).

…The process of creating hikaru dorodango is very conducive to flow: There is a repetitive quality to the work but it is still challenging as the dorodango changes, one minute to the next. Your mind remains engaged but you’re disconnected from everything else. Hours can easily slip by this way…How sturdy are they? That varies by soil. Some would shatter like glass if you dropped them. This one would dent your hardwood floor and roll away.