Dorodangos

These are amazing!





https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dorodango

They are a hard, shiny ball forumed from soil that are squeezed and polished by hand.  Way cooler than it sounds.

The first two are made with soil from the ground, this next one scientific.

Thanks for finding that! It's hard to believe you can get such a nice article by playing mud pies! I wonder if I have enough clay for them to work with my soil?

Not sure you actually need that much clay specifically. I remember the Mythbusters did this with dung (in their proverb-testing special, while busting the saying "you can't polish a poop") If I recall correctly they at least partially succeeded, suggesting that organic material might to some extent replace clay... It was probably something like 15 years since I watched this, though, so I might be wrong.

I found it

These are so neat. I saw this a while back. One day sitting and pondering on som things the thought  came to me about how a lot of things we people do is copying nature in some way or another a lot of times. And thats when I realized that its almost like how oysters make pearls. They take the irritant and coat it over and over with the mother of pearl and thats how you get a pearl. The doridango takes the mud and round and round to form the shinny ball. Idk...almost the same to me. What do you think?

I've tried my hand at making dorodangos. They're fun to make, but I find them to be a bit tetchy. It takes a long time, and just when I've got one almost fully polished, and I'm trying to get the last bits done, the polish begins to come off, and I have to start from square one again. I expect it's a matter of practice. And it's a good exercise in patience.

I like the ones I've done. With a couple of them, I gave up when the polish didn't take. The ones that took have places I couldn't get polished without jeopardizing the rest of it. So anyways, mine are pretty wabi sabi, but I'm proud of them.

We use a not-very-polished form of this, using a microbial solution mixed with potting soil to cure, and then throw into the Ala Wai Canal in Waikiki, to help restore microbial balance to the canal and reduce foul anaerobic odors.  They help to bring back a more livable ecosystem for wildlife (and people).

But I didn't know this was like an art form.  Leave it to the Japanese to figure out something artsy from cheap and natural materials!  haha

Clay, sand, and straw.  Sound familiar?



This video is a work of art.