A s a retort to the doom-mongering prognostications of AI’s dominance over human creativity, it is momentarily comforting to tally up the things it cannot do. It cannot throw a pot, blow glass, beat metal, weave bamboo or turn wood. Perhaps, when it has assumed absolute control of human consciousness and the machinery of mass production, it will be able to. But for now, throwing a vessel and weighing its heft in your hand, or carving a tray and sizing up its form with your eye are still the preserve of skilled craftspeople, using techniques their distant ancestors would recognise.

View image in fullscreen Laconic simplicity … Hyakkō: 100+ Makers from Japan. Photograph: Jeremie Souteyrat/Japan House London

On show at London’s Japan House is the work of more than 100 pairs of eyes

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