Fancy cleaning
As the season of spring cleaning looms, U.S. electronics company Shark has come up with something quite elaborate to brighten such a mundane house chore.
Shark Ninja CEO Gordon Thom is the man behind one of the fanciest handheld vacuums around. During the 1980s Thom, then a diplomat in Japan, met a member of the Gagyu family, which established its Utsutsugawa-yaki pottery kiln in the 17th century. So impressed was Thom by the Gagyu family's unusual technique involving hand-brushed motifs and brilliantly glossy glazes that now, 30 years later, he initiated a collaboration between Shark Ninja and the 14th Gagyu successor.