The traditional artisans of the Shawo Village in China use foot-powered lathes to carve out the wood. The craft workers belonging to this small community of 270 households fashion wooden bowls, utensils, and other wooden artefacts using this native technique.
The transformation of a wooden piece of a log into several wooden bowls is a mesmerising experience. However, the revered knowledge of using a foot-powered lathe to design and produce wooden objects is dying out. Only a handful of elders in the community know how to operate this lathe machine.
Li Xuemin is one of the youngsters who wants to keep this tradition alive and is striving to learn this dying craft. You can watch how the wooden bowl is made from a wooden chunk in this video:
Pretty mesmerizing, isn’t it?