Sources of inspiration

It’s always difficult to work out where or why inspiration strikes, but here are a few books and other resources that I return to again and again.

Books

These two little books provide a great visual introduction to Japanese Noh masks. Recreating these intricate masks, traditionally carved out of wood, is a rewarding challenge. It’s a good pottery challenge, although you sometimes need to add a few other bits of material, too! I think I got both of these books second-hand for a pound or two from AbeBooks.

Staying on the same theme here are a couple of other books which focus on Japanese arts and crafts. Japanese Crafts is a really lovely (albeit a bit sad) profile of a range of traditional Japanese crafts. A gift some years ago it’s a book I come back to now and again.

Netsuke Masks is a bit of a classic catalogue of a particular form of micro-mask-making. Netsuke are Japanese belt toggles traditionally either carved ivory or wood. Again, some of these are good pottery challenges.

For a change of scene, here is another book which came from a charity shop and was a gift some time ago. Again some great inspiration here – and some interesting challenges.

Internet resources

This could go on forever. So, just a couple of fantastic online resources. First, much of the British Museum collection is now online and is a wonderful resource. A search for ‘mask’ in their online collection generates around 3,800 hits. Plenty of inspiration (see below)!

Equally good (I really had to say that!) is the online collection from the Pitt Rivers and related museums in Oxford. They have a fantastic collection of traditional masks, around 1800, of which have pictures online. They also have a great on-line search facility which makes it very easy to navigate around the collection. Try it!

AI Image creation

Love or loath it AI is changing the way we all work and play. Image creators have matured in recent years and can provide a great starting point for a project. I tend to use the Image Creator in Bing but other image creators are available! Key here is trial and error and providing enough descriptive key words that narrow down the results.