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         or more than 50 years I have been making my own pottery tools.   

       That is what you did if you worked under Kenneth Beittel at Penn State and were serious about being a ceramic artist in the 50’s and 60’s. 

When I worked under the Japanese potters Hamada Shoji and Inouie Manji I saw and used tools I had not seen before.  In Korea I saw and used different versions of those and additional tools.  The Asian tools simply worked better than the common tools I found in America.  They redefined what should be “basic”.  During my years of teaching ceramics, my students made their own Asian tools.  We also used these tools with Mary’s elementary school students with great success.  In 1996 Mary and I received a grant to do workshops on Korean ceramic processes.  We took our tools to those workshops and became more convinced that there was a demand for the tools we were using.  Our workshop participants wanted to buy them, so we made some.  We even invented a few that we thought would work better for our workshops.  When we gave some of our tools to ceramic artist friends to test, they raved about them and adopted them in their studio and production work.  The demand became so great that we hired a cabinetmaker friend in Pennsylvania to make the wooden ones.  We’re working on having our metal tools produced as well.  Thus Dragon ClawTM Tools began. 

   Why did we choose the name Dragon ClawTM Tools?  The image for our trademark comes from an old Korean pot.  The claws on the dragon on that pot remind me of some of the potter’s tools used in Korea and Japan. (See below)

   We are not yet ready for national distribution but individual ceramic artists can purchase our tools from us directly.  Photos descriptions and prices for our tools will eventually be available on this site.  We haven’t been pushing our tools until now because our workshop participants buy most of what we can produce.  We have a low inventory and debated putting this on our site at all at this time.  Several thousand of our prior workshop participants and students already know and use them.

   Another reason for choosing a dragon as our symbol is that Korean dragons are not vicious; they are benevolent.  They care for the people, providing rain for their sustenance.  That is one of the reasons the symbol for the emperor or king is the dragon.  The emperor cares for the people.  While we don’t consider ourselves as royal anything, we do want to give back to the educational and ceramic communities that we consider our professions.  We want to produce quality tools that you will find useful but that are not available on the market elsewhere else or that improve significantly on what is available.  Our intent is not to be competition to the other tool manufactures for the same business.  In fact you may eventually find links on the Dragon Claw Tools website to other tool manufacturers whose tools we respect.  We simply want to provide you with optional tools we believe work better.

   We will eventually make tool plans available for making some tools we don’t manufacture.  Those plans will be free or very inexpensive.  We have also patented some of our tools.  Our goal is share what we have learned about tools during our more than fifty years of experience.  We are not quite ready yet but when we are we’ll let you know.  Thanks for stopping by.

   To those who know some of our tools from our workshops.  We do have a limited supply available.  Contact us for information and pricing.

   You can contact us at MorningEarth@SBCGlobal.Net for more information.  We look forward to hearing from you.

Respectfully,

Arthur K. J. Park

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