10 Of The World’s Priciest Arts And Art Supplies | So Expensive | Insider Business

the world's most expensive Fine Arts are as varied as the tools used to make them like oil paints a purple pigment made from snails we traveled the world to discover what makes art so expensive our first stop is Japan's narrow prefecture where for over 450 years the company Corbin has been making some of the world's most sought after calligraphy Inc this is ink itsubu okabe is needing it until it's as soft as a rice cake it's imperative for him to be as thorough as possible because a well needed mixture becomes high quality calligraphy ink it takes at least four years of Aging before these solid ink sticks can be sold and even longer for the most expensive ones a 200 gram high grade ink stick from this producer Corbin costs over a thousand dollars and for some other brands prices can reach almost two thousand dollars meanwhile almost double the amount of commercial liquid India ink can go for less than nine dollars so why are solid ink sticks so sought after and why they're so expensive [Music] it's January in Japan's narrow prefecture ink producer Corbin has been making Japanese calligraphy ink for 450 years this type of ink also known as Sumi is traditionally sold in the form of handmade solid ink sticks to use the drying stick calligraphers rub it on an ink Stone to mix it with water to me ink is typically black but it can also be tinted brown or blue the ingredients are simple soot animal glue and perfume but the quality of these materials and the time intensive techniques required to collect and process them have a large impact on the final price [Music] it starts in this room lit by a hundred oil lamps this Workshop has four rooms like this where Artisans produce all the soot they require to make ink two workers are in charge of this stage each overseeing two rooms and 200 oil lamps they carefully manage the vegetable oil in the Lambs and gradually collect soot throughout the day in Japan this process is called catching smoke every day Artisans light all 400 lamps and cover each with a lid the underside of which collects soot as the oil burns but they can't just leave the lid in the same place for hours because overheating it will prevent such from accumulating the flame must be off-center and The Artisans must rotate the lid every 20 minutes for two hours [Music] The Artisans scrape the soot off the top of the lid they replenish the oil and the process starts all over a total of five times a day for each lamp these lamps contain rapeseed oil the most common Choice when producing high grade ink sticks ink sticks made of soot from even more expensive oils like Polonia Camellia or Sesame can easily cost up to four times as much but Artisans must also consider other details like the containers that hold the oil and the material of the wig to ensure the quality of the soot they use non-porous earthenware containers crafts people in this Workshop even weave the Wicks themselves to exacting specifications [Music] foreign s determines the final price then there's the binding agent animal glue unlike most of its modern Liquid Ink counterparts which use shellac Sumi ink typically uses cattle glue for the most expensive ink sticks Artisans sometimes mix in other types of glue such as donkey deer and goat says this improves the Ink's glossiness and texture the company buys glue specially made for Sumi ink which comes in a dry board-like form Artisans dissolve it by mixing it with 70 degrees Celsius water which takes over an hour and a half according to kobayan dissolving the glue slowly at a low temperature is key to producing quality ink is foreign makers add fragrance like bunion and musk to counteract it is [Music] the next step is to knead the soot glue and fragrance into a soft dough the dough is needed every morning by hand foot doshitsubu takes care to knead it thoroughly so the soot and glow are evenly distributed that way the solid stick can eventually dissolve into homogeneous Liquid Ink [Music] once he's properly kneaded the dough toshit sugu cuts it into bowls and weighs them for consistency then he places the balls into molds and uses a machine to press them into shape improperly kneaded dough results in ink sticks that don't produce Rich color [Music] um [Music] chocolate foreign makes about 6 000 of its smallest highest quality ink sticks a month it employs a handful of artisans for this and the ones tasked with needing require the most experience it takes five years to train as a sumi Inc craftsperson but 10 years before they're allowed to make high quality ink [Music] gobayan produces almost 40 000 of its smallest to me ink sticks between October and April when the cooler weather of winter ensures the glue can Harden during shaping but the work isn't done yet drying the ink sticks too quickly will cause them to crack making them unsellable so Artisans rely on a traditional technique using Oak Ash to slowly absorb moisture from the sticks over a long period of time they start by covering the sticks in moist ashes each day they swap yesterday's ashes with dryer ones they repeat this process for up to 40 days until the ink sticks are about 70 percent dry after they hang the sticks with straw and air dry them in-house for up to six months properly drying and maturing an ink stick takes at least four years the longer the sticks dry and age the better they perform and the more expensive they become corbian itself has ink sticks that are hundreds of years old foreign foreign Artisans polish them and apply the finishing touches now they're ready to be sold to calligraphers like sure azakami foreign traditionally prefer ink sticks to Liquid Ink but in order to write for the Sumi ink stick he must first transform it into a liquid this requires an ink Stone and water Shaw adds a small amount of water and rubs the ink stick on the stone breaking it apart he mixes the two to make the Liquid Ink adding more water or more drying until he gets the consistency he needs foreign s provide him with the same writing experience foreign 95 of Japan's Sumi ink is made here in NADA prefecture Sumi ink production in Japan is said to have begun in the 7th century when Chinese ink making methods were introduced by monks by the 14th century Sumi incuse was flourishing in Japan though its primary use is for calligraphy it's also often used for ink paintings known as sumiere and because gobayan must age its ink sticks for several years before it can sell them consistent production is necessary or else its Supply won't meet the demand but that doesn't mean the company wants to ramp up its production s strives to continue making calligraphy ink using the same techniques and of the same quality as its founders um foreign calligraphy brush it must be removed this intense attention to detail is part of why these brushes can cost over one thousand dollars you can find a beginner brush for less than fifteen dollars but for handmade brushes custom designed for a master calligrapher Artisans spend months turning raw hair into a perfect brush tip but what makes these brushes unique and why are they so expensive [Music] calligraphy is a respected art form in Japan and has been practiced for centuries but today there aren't many skilled brush makers left [Music] yoshiyukihata is a third generation brush maker and has been making calligraphy brushes since he was a teenager is his family's Workshop in kabajiri focuses on what they call no compromise craftsmanship each brush tip is Handmade by a single artisan but making these brushes isn't easy [Music] for a master calligrapher like Daiso kanako small differences in a brush's hardness or ink retention can drastically affect the lines it can produce foreign [Music] the dozens of steps involved in Brush making start with selecting the hair different types of hair have a big impact on the price of a brush yoshiyuki specialty is one of the priciest goat hair this hair was collected 50 years ago from the chest of Yangtze River delta white goats hair from this specific breed of goat is classified as type 3 hair based on its size luster and elasticity it's a highly sought after hair for brush making because it's soft yet durable and retains ink well um but today this type of hair is hard to find in large quantities and can cost thousands of dollars per kilogram selecting high quality hair is done entirely by eye and it's one of the hardest skills for a new brush maker to learn [Music] [Music] [Music] but this long process is just beginning once the hairs are chosen they're boiled and combed to remove any fluff this process separates straight long hairs which are ideal for brush making one of the most time consuming steps is aligning all of these hairs this delicate work is key to making a uniform brush but it's largely based on experience and Instinct um throughout the process brush makers patiently remove any imperfect or damaged hairs [Music] foreign [Music] [Music] foreign foreign [Music] for a brush starts to take shape after trimming he wets the hair and combines different bundles to create a brush that is dense and durable then he dips the hair in fionori an adhesive liquid made from seaweed to hold the hairs together [Music] [Music] foreign the finished brush tip is almost unrecognizable from the Raw Hair but the precise work isn't over yet [Music] once the hair dries yoshiyuki ties up the ends and burns each one with a hot iron binding the hairs together any mistake here could ruin a month of work okay finally it's time to assemble the brush like the brush tip each handle is custom made [Music] this time-consuming process along with the materials used means these brushes can cost a hundred times more than a mass-produced brush the price varies based on the size and type of brush a larger brush requires more hair which naturally increases the price Indo brushes often cost around thirteen hundred dollars but some brushes can cost a lot more since despite the high price these brushes are essential tools for calligraphers like Daiso he followed in the footsteps of his father and grandfather and has been practicing calligraphy for 20 years foreign [Music] [Music] thank you some brush makers mix natural and synthetic hair to make brushes more affordable but yoshiyuki remains committed to using only the highest quality materials Koso yoshiyuki-san will be the workshop's fourth generation brush maker [Music] is foreign but like many traditional crafts the future of brush making is unclear demand for handmade brushes is in Decline some brush makers have started selling makeup brushes to bring in new customers but the main concern for yoshiyuki and his family is the lack of raw materials thank you [Music] making authentic Tyrion purple dye starts here with extracting a murex snail gland it takes nearly 45 kilograms of these snails to produce a single gram of pure Tyrion purple extract [Music] painstaking and pungent process and the result this single gram of dye that can fetch nearly three thousand dollars by comparison five grams of a synthetic version sells for under four dollars Terry and purple can be used to dye clothes or create paints in the ancient world it was so rare that only royalty could afford to wear clothes dyed with it even today at such an astronomical price Tyrion purple pigment is mostly a collector's item so what makes real Tyrion purple so hard to make and why is it so expensive [Music] he's been making Tyrion purple dye in his home in Tunisia for 15 years today Russian is one of a handful of producers in the world bringing this ancient dye back to life Russell learned how to make this die through an excruciating process of trial and error because there's no instruction manual he reconstructed the techniques he uses from first century texts oh my God I must say that I I have gone through a lot of failures the historical texts about the process of making turn purple are very rare and quite vague so you have to start everything from scratch and learn everything on your own to make the extract because it must navigate a complex process and it's this extensive labor that accounts for much of the final price the part of the muric snail that contains the pigment is called the hyperbranchial gland the good thing is that the the gland is located right under the shell which helps a little bit in the extraction it's the only part of the snail used to make Tyrion purple and each gland contains only a few drops of pigment but before he can extract the gland Gerson has to wash scrub and sort the snails by size you don't really want all of this mud and scent to interfere with the dye When you crush the shell and expose the plant so this is the first step and it's a very important step you really have to clean your snails very very well resin can now extract stray hammers each shell lightly it'll take too long but if he hits it too hard he'll crush the gland it took less than two years to learn how to do this efficiently and of course the snail is not wasted then it will be cooked for dinner everything is basically recycled to make the extract Crescent first macerates the fresh glands in cold water and lets them ferment in an airtight container once the glands release their colorant Crescent gently washes and filters the mixture to separate the dye from the flesh this is the first of six separate rounds of purification necessary to make a pure Tyrion purple extract can dry the pigment mixture he applies it to a sheet of glass and lets it dry under the sun he uses glass because it won't absorb any of the valuable pigment so these glands have been drying for three days they are half dry now they're still malleable as you can say this is the pure colorant or more or less pure once the pure colorant mixture is dried he scrapes it off the glass with a razor making sure to get every last bit and the whole process from the liquid colorant up until the dried pure powder the whole mass will have lost at least 98 of its weight the dry pigment is now purified five more times in a grinding and sieving process to remove any detritus the nearly 100 pounds of muric snails are finely transformed into one gram of pure Tyrion purple extract and acquiring enough snails is another challenge an expensive one Russian can spend hundreds of dollars sourcing the snails he needs for his dog that's because finding these snails requires experienced fishes one of the fishes a lesson works with is Celine Ben Milad he harvests murex snails from Solomon Beach like krasen Saleem and his team have perfected their technique over time [Music] foreign four hours to find the right snails or he can die for a whole day to no avail foreign to dive 15 meters deep which makes it more expensive and if the weather is consistently bad the price goes up even more sometimes conditions for Saleem and his team to go a whole month without fishing but it's out of their control it is dangerous for the snails too which are highly sensitive to climate change since the early 1970s the population of Newark snails steeply declined due to temperature changes in the water and over harvesting we have to be very cautious not to be engaged in over harvesting to make sure that the small specimens are put back into the sea to preserve the species so this is why it takes a lot of time and careful management of the snail population is vital as a custom and his divers attempt to revive tunisia's thousands year old die making tradition Russian doesn't use all the fresh nails to make extract he reserves some to dye fabric directly this time he mixes the snail glands with water and a reducing agent and lets them ferment the mixture goes from a colorless liquid to Green before it turns purple finding the right pH balance in this step is crucial if it's too acidic the wool may burn and if it's too basic it may cause the wall to felt so now we're just monitoring the BH it's about eight which is perfect this is also the moment when the soluble dye is the most light sensitive Crescent must cover the dive at immediately to avoid Too much exposure to light too much light can turn the dye from purple to Blue destroying a week's worth of work when the material has soaked for the appropriate amount of time Crescent lifts the vat lid exposing the mixture to lightened air this allows the mixture to oxidize and this is how the color will gradually start to develop but one round of rat dying won't always do the trick like with this silk scarf it took me like eight months to produce and it required like 800 pounds of fresh snails and this is still not completed and it's not always guaranteed that the color will come out the same shade historically speaking there isn't a single Pew or shade of Tyrion purple it's a range of Shades that ranges from the color of clotted blood to the color of red purple this range is the result of mixing three different subspecies of murex snails hexaplex trunculus which produces a violet blue color bolognus brandaris which secretes the color of clotted blood and the blood mouth or stromanita hemasterma which releases a rich red purple color Tyrion purple dye dates back to the Bronze Age and is named after the Phoenician city of tear some historians believe it was produced as early as the 21st century BC ancient civilizations from Venetia to the carthaginian and Roman Empires prospered by producing and trading this die one of the production sites was Mannings on the island of Gerber which is now an archaeological site a text from the 4th Century states that a single pound of Tyrion purple dye costs three pounds of gold but production of this dye came to a screeching halt in the 15th century after the fall of the Byzantine Empire foreign [Music] is Reviving this culturally valuable die so tunisians can reconnect with their ancestry [Music] Russian learned about the die at the age of 14 and was enthralled by its history in Carthage over a decade later he found a murex snail on the shore oozing purple my old passion for red purple came rushing from its deep Slumber and I really had this Revelation and this is how my adventure for Reviving this legendary dive started now he hopes to ramp up his production offering more shades of pigment well of course my dream is to enlarge this project and to like to create an old-fashioned die Factory and to produce more but as I said the main concern should always be to preserve the specie because if there is no mirax there is no diet senmai is a tradition created using a attacker harvested from one region of the country it requires months of application and sanding back layers of paint to build up the image last year Ascend my painting sold at auction for 972 thousand dollars so what makes these paintings so special and why are they so expensive [Music] watching noise femting Trung has dedicated almost 50 years to mastering Sun Mai and knows how equally tiring and rewarding the craft can be it is an art form of incredible value in Vietnamese culture for both the time and skill it requires and the exclusive natural materials needed to make it the process of making lacquer paint begins in the forests of Vietnam where Planters collect resin from a toxic wax tree native to Southeast Asia called the ruse succedinia [Music] Planters must cut into more than 400 trees to retrieve between one and one and a half kilograms of resin [Music] why after harvesting the lacquer must be removed of any impurities and mixed for several hours before it's suitable for painting one of the principal features of senmai is the depth created by adding several layers of paint and sanding them back these layers aren't always visible in the finished work but are what differentiate lacquer painting from other common painting styles with oil painting artists paint from Back to Front painting the landscape first and the details later the process of lacquer painting is the opposite hi guys [Music] artists mix natural ingredients to create colors like eggshells to make white or Cinnabar a toxic ore for red in some cases artists add leaves of silver sometimes even gold to create a gentle Sheen these substances can be one of the costliest parts of senmai painting while the raw materials of the painting may be more expensive than many other styles the skill and the work of the artist are what set the vinyl value along with the immense patient sunmi requires each work is unique and unpredictable that's because painters are never quite sure how the layers will resurface through sanding this can either increase the value of the work or Force an artist to start over foreign painters must be careful to let each layer fully dry before sanding otherwise colors or designs could be ruined there's no set amount of time a layer takes to dry as it largely depends on the weather that day um okay after weeks of work pieces are polished with coal powder which creates the smooth surface and Lasting shine of senmai artists have used lacquer Ford's glossy finish for thousands of years one of its best known applications is Japanese lacquerware decorative pieces of furniture boxes and dinnerware but in the early 20th century Vietnamese artists developed an interest in lacquer painting and created a style unique to the world impressive as these Works can be the process is both costly and arduous and that's why fan Ching Trung believes the future of this tradition will depend on finding more artists willing to learn it is [Music] thank you [Music] oil paint is simple at its most basic it's just a mixture of oil and pigment but depending on the color and quality a liter of this paint could cost you between 285 and a thousand dollars so what is it that makes this paint so special and why is it so expensive [Music] oil paint has been used for hundreds of years it's made from a drying oil like flaxseed and pigment sometimes with fillers and thicken as added when mixed and crushed these ingredients bind and thicken to form a permanent paint [Music] while the rise of oil paint is associated with the Renaissance paintings using poppy seed oil have been dated as far back as 7th Century Afghanistan but there's one key reason this paint hasn't ever been cheap pigments cost a lot of money [Music] so in a good oil paint you're going to be looking for a high pigment loading and a good quality pigment in that high pigment loading so it doesn't matter if you have loads of pigment if it's a bad quality pigment you're looking for light fastness so it doesn't fade and tests on light fastness that have been going on for Generations in fact for some pigments so you're not going to create a masterpiece and then 50 years down the line it's completely washed out the highest quality oil paint can be up to 75 percent pigment and throughout history the most sought after pigments have been worth far more than their weight in gold and that's because they take a lot of work to discover and to make the favorite Imperial color in Roman times Tyrion purple was a bright pigment made from the glands of sea snails and it could take 12 000 snails to make just two grams of the color Indian yellow was originally made from the urine of cows fed only on Mango leaves and in the 16th to 19th centuries mummy Brown was actually made with the ground up remains of Egyptian mummies and while the color was perfect for some flesh tones we quickly ran out of mummies to use pigments do dramatically change the cost and in professional levels you'll have Series so you'll have probably a series one well up to series seven the higher the number the more expensive it is and that's due to the pigments how difficult they are to obtain where they come from and also how in demand they are as a product in the real world possibly the most valuable though was ultramarine literally meaning Beyond the Sea as it had to be mined in Afghanistan it was made from lapis lazuli which in its purest pigment form can still cost up to thirty thousand dollars per kilo [Music] the gemstone was used to make the pigment until a synthetic version was created in 1826 and the vibrant blue was valued so highly in the Renaissance that it was generally reserved for painting the Robes of the Virgin Mary synthetic versions of many of these pigments have now been created and while this means many are cheaper some can still be difficult to produce cobalt blue for example has to be made by heating its components to 1 200 degrees Celsius and once you have these pigments they're tricky to work with winter and Newton has been making oil paints for almost 200 years and its Factory in France produces over 5 million liters of paint each year in fact produce paint is like cooking so here you have mixing so we're mixing components like pigments and over additives like oil we have a meaning so it depends by using different type of machines so we're using Granite ceramic or Steel when we are testing okay so testing the viscosity the Grain and of course the color the whole process is so select so for every single pigment you need to handle it in a particular way so it will need a particular amount of oil with it and that ratio changes for every pigment and you're going to need to grind it to a particular fineness and actually even with the same pigment the milling and the grinding will affect the color you have so if you over grind you might end up with something duller or with another color if you grind it very fine you might end up with a purple rather than a blue the research and testing for these colors can take months or even years to get right small samples of each color are made in a lab to measure consistency and Light fastness Above All Else the quality of oil paint needs to be reliable as professional artists need to guarantee that what they're working on now will last for hundreds of years and despite comparatively new paints like acrylic oil Still Remains an artist's favorite we've still got works that are still beautiful and relevant from the 15th century and it's also it's durable and it has this ability to layer where you can scrape back you can keep working you can work on a piece for years and keep on redoing it and it gives every piece this history and you know the materials themselves are expensive they're reliable they're gorgeous I mean they come out of the painting at you making a series 7 kalinsky Sable watercolor brush isn't easy the largest size brush can take almost a week and a half to make you can pick up a cheap synthetic brush for under two dollars but the series 7 could cost you over 300. so why would anyone pay for a brush that cost over a hundred times the price originally created on the request of Queen Victoria 7 brush was first made in 1866 and was designed to be the finest possible brush for watercolor painting since then the skill and craftsmanship that goes into making each one of these brushes has remained exactly the same to achieve this the company needed skilled brush makers and so in 1946 set up a new Factory in lowestoft England a fishing town with a history of rope making this Factory now makes over 25 million brushes a year the intricate work and dexterity required means that these brushes are almost exclusively made by women it takes three years to train and there are only nine brush Megs in the world that can make these top of the range Series 7 brushes I joined here when I was 16. I worked 18 years and I had 12 years off and I've been back 11 so I was 28 years I've been working for the company when you first start you would probably only make a few you've got to get like anything you've got a skill and you build on that and you get to learn the skill and then you get to do the speed components play a big part in the cost each brush head is made from kolinsky Sable Siberian weasel that's hair is said to cost three times the price of gold by weight these weasels are hunted sustainably Every Spring under cities guidelines across Siberia and Manchuria only guard hairs from the tail will do kalinsky hairs are chosen because every single strand has a surface of directional interlocking scales increasing the surface area and giving the hairs their strength and while many other natural and synthetic hairs are used for brushes nothing has quite matched the quality of sable once the hairs are cleaned and graded it's time to start making the brush the wool has to be removed with the comb and the hairs are packaged up and carefully boiled and ironed the brushes have to be made with hair at its natural length and the skilled brush makers can effortlessly separate between 28 and 32 millimeter length hairs just with their hands this skill takes years of training and practice the nine brush makers each have 27 years of experience on average here's that are blunt or Twisted have to be discarded and most importantly as each natural hair comes to a point every hair must be the correct way up the removed upside down hairs can be flipped and reused every single hair is checked over by hand the smallest brush size hairs are just seven millimeters long shorter than an average eyelash we can't afford two left standards drop in any way shape or form what I would say from that is what this Factory has is hand skills it has individual skills it has skills that when I have new people come in here they don't sometimes believe that this kind of work still happens we show them what people do they will turn around and say I'll never be able to do that but they will be able to do that if they understand that quality comes first [Music] when the hairs are all sorted they're ready to go into the Canon the bundle is tied together and gently Twisted through individual hairs are added or taken away until it's an exact fit they need to have that fine point to work with that basically it has that color carrying capacity the the brush won't split or do anything that it shouldn't do basically through the hair that we use through the skills of our makers and how they make them we've done everything we possibly can to make sure that we have produced the best product we possibly can [Music] then it's time to attach the handles the factory uses Birchwood handles imported from Italy the brush is glued into place and then the brush heads are crimped onto the handles foreign this crimping process bends the metal to shape and keeps the handle tightly attached to the brush [Music] once the paint brush is assembled it needs to be branded and tested the size and logo of each brush is stamped in gold on the handle wet Point testing assures that everything works exactly as expected and there aren't any loose or crooked hairs each brush is then gulled a process that gives the brush head its final shape and allows it to bounce back the shape of the natural hairs gives the brush a wide belly and a fine point so the key to art brush making is the people and that is the skill we retain knowledge from generation to generation so we have makers now that are working under an apprenticeship of a 49 year served brush maker who in itself had an apprenticeship under another 49 year serving brush maker who was bought into the business and his father who made brushes directly to Queen Victoria and it's very key that we retain that knowledge throughout the business generation to generation and we are now bringing in the Next Generation to make sure that we uphold very high quality standards that we base ourselves on [Music] Bonsai is an art form that requires years of training and centuries of dedication at the 2012 International Bonsai convention a tree was on sale for 100 million yen just under a million dollars and many more of these trees are considered completely priceless so what is it that makes Bond size so expensive [Music] Bonsai is the art of dwarfing a regular tree to create a perfect miniature representation of nature in a small pot it has a long history originating in China the practice of creating tiny trees and Landscapes appeared as far back as the 6th century the tree's growth is restricted by years of pruning wiring repotting and grafting and the plants need to be checked on and often watered every day the skills required to grow these trees plays a huge part in their value they are often bent and twisted into shape positioned around rocks or even placed with other trees to simulate a tiny Forest many of these techniques require years to master and any errors made can result in permanently ruining the shape or even killing a plant that has been growing for centuries [Music] chiako Yamamoto is a fourth generation Bonsai Master based in central Japan she's been creating and selling Bonsai for the last 51 years and one of the hardest skills to master when growing these plants is patience [Music] [Music] is [Music] foreign so it's more on Thursday night and this is [Music] [Music] the time and devotion this process requires is unlike almost any other form of artwork while the work is almost a form of sculpture the plants are living things and will always react in their own way [Music] [Music] foreign foreign [Music] the extraordinary time this process takes means that there just aren't that many trees around some of the most valuable Bonsai are over 800 years old and so the supply isn't going to increase anytime soon foreign [Music] other factors can contribute to the cost the Bonsai pots and the tools used are often handmade and can cost thousands of dollars themselves certain types of tree are also harder to grow or require certain techniques and may fetch a higher price but more than anything these trees are works of art valued for their beauty and the vision of the artist [Music] s is no foreign [Music] the secret to making some of the best Bonsai scissors in the world lies in learning how to forge samurai swords it [Music] is one of the only blacksmiths in Japan who still makes these scissors using methods that date back to the 5th Century professional gardeners are willing to pay thousands and wait a whole year to get their hands on a pair foreign Workshop Sasuke has been around for 155 years but he worries it may end with him we went to Sakai Japan to see how this Bonsai scissor making craft still standing standing yasu Hero's family business is one of the last in Sakai that specializes in Bonsai scissors in addition to knives like knives these scissors start with a small piece of metal yasuhiro cuts it down to about 10 centimeters he uses Japanese yasugi steel because it's more durable and helps the blade stay Sharp he starts with a softer kind to make the handle and the base of the blade he heats the metal in an old wood burning furnace instead of a modern gas burner Because he believes the heat is more concentrated that way it takes about an hour for it to reach the perfect temperature [Music] starts with a power hammer to stretch it then he switches to a manual one to perfect the round shape of the handle it is [Music] to make the blade he forges a hard piece of Steel over the softer base he started with this is called Forge welding it's one of the oldest and most essential skills in blacksmithing yasu hero uses powdered borax and iron oxide to bind them and help prevent oxidation he heats the metal once more and hammers it again to flatten it into the shape of a blade these short TAPS at a low temperature make the particles finer and smaller and the metal denser and stronger slowly it'll start looking like scissors yasu hero files the handle to make it slightly rough and uneven this will help people keep a tight grip on them he uses this mold to bend the handle into its signature butterfly shape straight line onto the blade to complete the signature Sasuke look the most crucial part is a technique called quenching yasu hero heats the blade one last time at 780 degrees Celsius you can tell it's the right temperature just by looking at the color of the fire then he immediately submerges it in water Sudden Change in temperature will harden the bleed he prefers to do it in the morning before the Sun is up foreign [Music] if done incorrectly the metal can turn brittle today he's the only person in his family who's mastered all of the steps and he often works alone [Music] he Buffs the scissors to make them smooth yasuhiro says this can be exhausting is foreign both sides have to fit perfectly together Bonsai scissors have to be as sharp as a razor to make precise clean cuts it can take him a month to make one pair but it can last a lifetime yasuhiro also repairs scissors that are more than 100 years old foreign has been famous for its metal work since the 5th Century people from across the country would come here looking for knives swords and even guns yasuhiro himself comes from a long line of blacksmiths spanning 22 Generations but it was his great great grandfather satajiro who made scissors the focus of the family business in 1867. and when yasuhiro took it over in the late 60s he was determined to grow the business is [Music] but it wasn't always easy to find new customers I know [Music] today yasu hero is one of the few people in the country making such high quality scissors Bonsai specialist yoshikawa masakazu was willing to wait a year to get his hands on a pair without Clean Cuts needles can turn brown and branches can wither and sometimes bad blades can stop small buds from growing up using good scissors is also essential for masakazu because Bonsai are an important symbol in Japanese and Buddhism [Music] yasuhiro says he's always learning from his customers [Music] he's most proud of this 26 000 pair that took him three years to make and is decorated with gold he dreams of making another similar one coated with a wine red lacquer but it would take him at least four years and orders keep piling up um [Music] people can order custom scissors online or visit his Workshop in person but there may not be another successor to the brand yasu Hero has two sons but he isn't sure they'll follow in his footsteps I um meanwhile he carries the responsibility of crafting better scissors on his own foreign [Music] shuts down the pollution doesn't stop toxic waste flows for decades contaminating rivers and killing Aquatic Life and it's nearly impossible to contain nope for a long time most of these dreams were just written off now a team has developed a method to harvest the month and turn it into paint can it really clean up a century of worldwide waste it's harvest day at Pine Run a Creek in Ohio yeah keep going moving now yeah I see the flow Michelle Shively McIver and John sabraw have been making pigment out of this pollution for over a decade this stuff is just really good yeah it's our favorite it's our favorite their team built a system of pipes that collect smelly goo called acid mine drainage or AMD for short it's highly acidic water leaking from an old coal mine that closed over a hundred years ago when you leave a mine and you just walk away from it what happens is it fills up instantly with water there really is no way to seal the mines completely the water that still leaks from mines today creates iron oxide which can be lethal to Aquatic Life that pipe is full of iron sludge and it's going to come out of there really fast but it also happens to be an essential ingredient to make paint bucket it's a low-tech system right now that's what this team is harvesting today gold Matt and gold team filters buckets of iron oxide using these troughs smooth it out and put some Cool Whip on there and it's like pumpkin pie in a bin I'd eat it today's Haul is over 200 pounds of iron oxide it's a bit more than this mine site pumps out in a single day then they move it to their research facility where Engineers wash the pigment to remove impurities that affect the final color basically we're just diluting out all the dissolved solids this is guy reefler he's an engineer who partnered with Michelle and John to start true pigments it still kind of shocks me that Sunday Creek is this Orange Mass and it goes right through several communities and it's been doing it for 20 years and aside from us nobody's really doing anything about it the team dries the pigment before shipping it off to a giant kiln they change the color by controlling the temperature then they send the pigment to Portland Oregon where gambling artists colors uses it to make paint we wanted to be the first to make color with it we were just kind of all in there's three colors that are all made from pigment that has been painstakingly reclaimed by John and team this one is called iron violet this worker mixes the pigment zinc and flax oil and a mill uses heat and pressure to combine the pigment and oil and so with a little bit of pressure we draw it down then workers test for thickness texture and color finally they bottle it up Gamblin markets the paint as reclaimed Earth colors John teaches art and uses the paints in his own studio if I want something deep and red and earthy you're not going to get anything better than an iron oxide [Music] he says his art helps to start conversations about protecting the environment the circle gives them permission to decide for themselves instantly whether that is a universe a planet a stream or microbes and the new colors are taking off painters across the country have shared what they've created using the hashtag reclaimed color for now true pigments can't Harvest enough iron oxide to clean up an entire stream but the company plans to scale up by 2024 true pigments plans to open a larger facility it will harvest iron oxide and clean the water at one of Ohio's most polluted acid mine sites that would mean the company could Harvest raw material that could be used in all kinds of products not just paints construction materials concrete bricks it's used for a lot of Industrial Coatings agricultural fertilizer Cosmetics we really had to find something useful to make out of this really you know detrimental pollution and Michelle says her team's method of retrieving iron oxide is more sustainable than mining it unfortunately they're dealing with a nearly unlimited resource there are nearly ten thousand square miles of abandoned coal mines across the United States iron oxide didn't do anything wrong iron oxide is not to blame here if you treat it right like we're doing it is a valuable asset it is beautiful these mines will continue producing AMD for hundreds of years but Michelle is confident that turning pollution into art can make a difference [Music] Modern Art is expensive from completely white canvases to simple abstract colors these seemingly basic Works can cost you Millions so what makes their price so high and how can they possibly be worth this much money [Music] Modern Art is a wide field covering everything from around 1870 to 1970. but say Modern Art to someone on the street and chances are they possibly picture something like this at the turn of the century art changed from the birth of abstract impressionism to the minimalists and even performance art was no longer just about representing the world with skill well that skill faded away after photography was invented once photography is invented that was a skill that camera could do so artists no longer felt that that was their primary reason for making art art isn't about beauty that's it never was really art generally became more conceptual and more challenging but this change wasn't popular with everyone in a 2016 study of the British public 28 of people don't consider this art 65 of people don't think this is Art and 83 of the public definitely don't consider this to be art over a hundred years after its creation the work is still somehow as divisive and controversial as ever with the public but that hasn't stopped record prices being set I think most people think that um modern or contemporary artists are having a laugh at their expense and nobody wants to feel a form for many who are immediately dismissive of these pieces frustration also often comes when they see the price most of us I think tend to be cynics and we I think a lot of times associate art with value and that I think that triggers the question of well why why is it that much or why such a high value if you know I could probably do this I think unless you're in the market and actively buying art there's no need to look at Art and think of a price tag it shouldn't I mean it shouldn't be the way you look at art for the artists involved what looks simple can be the culmination of a lifetime's work take the black Square for example painted by turn of the century avant-garde artist Casimir malyavich this simple black painting didn't come out of nowhere it's the result of 20 years of simplification and development when it was shown the black Square was a revolutionary symbol exhibited at the top corner of the room a spot reserved for orthodox religious icons making this work wasn't exactly an easy decision either and in 1930 Stalin's regime confiscated maliovich's artworks and manuscripts and he was jailed for two months yes the white canvases are or the black canvases are very rarely all they've done they haven't just come out to school and said I could paint a black canvas I mean as much as we might think we could do that yes we could do that but the artist has thought of it and probably had a journey quite a long journey and a process to get there The Works aren't just made for profit it's often only after the artist is dead that the art can fetch the incredible price that it's reached today in 2008 one of maliovic's abstract Works sold for 60 million dollars and the demand for these important modern works is only going to increase the natural trend is for you to see it a rise in prices but that's because it's these true masterpieces are rarer to find because they're really all in museums [Music] but setting an actual price can be tough in the end the value is only going to be what people are willing to pay as long as there's going to be artists producing there's always going to be sort of shifts in Tendencies and taste I would say also and taste in the market it seems like every year there's a new record price and has extreme wealth inequality increases so do the number of millionaires willing to pay the fortune required for these works no matter what the artist intended art is now seen as an easy investment by many and companies have appeared that tree art purely as an asset for financial gain but despite the ever increasing prices of the modernist masterpieces for 99 of the artists out there their work has always been a labor of love there are obviously people out there with a lot of money who view art just to be a commodity nothing else but there's going to be people who approach us or engage with it with it because they take genuine pleasure from it or it stimulates them or they feel it enriches them on an abstract painter I'm not really dealing much with form I became quite obsessed I was painting all day all night and it was just something that really that kind of took a hold of me so [Music] it's it's not easy being an artist in London there's a lot of really good talent out there I think you've really got to be good to actually make any money you don't have the I suppose Network initially yeah it's sort of really expensive habit but to be honest that's why I suppose everybody's got devices but um this is It's My Kind of passion and hobby so that's where all my um time effort and kind of spare finances go Trends in the market may change and prices will shift but the popularity of modern and Contemporary Art isn't going anywhere foreign foreign

Channel: Business Insider

Views: 2,887,111

Keywords: Business Insider, Business News, so expensive, art, art making, craft, ink, brushes, dyes, painting, paint, oil, modern art, Scissors, japan, japan art

Id: M2v7HFTXdak

Length: 80min 0sec (4800 seconds)

Published: Sat Mar 25 2023