Hunched over his well-lit workbench dotted with fiddly-looking brushes and hand tools, horseshoe-shaped stone moulds, pastes, and a microscope, Shinichiro Tsuji could easily be mistaken for a Wētā Workshop sculptor. But Shin’s steady hands aren’t whittling intricate Middle-earth special effects; they’re making teeth instead.
From the deliberate discolouration to those ridges atop of molars, the detailing is exquisitely authentic, but affable Shin baulks when I compare his work to that of an artist.
“A craftsman, maybe!” he says. The Japanese-born tooth maker comes from a long line of craftsfolk. His father, too, was a tooth maker with 50 years in the business, and Shin says he’d always dreamt of continuing the tradition, while incorporating some travel along the way.
“Back in Japan, tooth making was always done in secret,” says Shin with a laugh. “The dental laboratories are secret places, often built into homes, so I very much enjoy the interaction with the public in New Zealand.”
In 2007, he qualified as a New Zealand dental technician, and has been specialising in high-end dental ceramic restoration ever since. “There’s so much I love about my work, such as the actual crafting process, but most of all I love that I’m helping ease people’s pain and bringing their smile and their confidence back.”
The tooth making industry is an ancient one. An 8,000-year-old skull was discovered in Pakistan with perfectly drilled holes in it, and over the following millennia, from the Middle East through to Europe, North Africa, and Central America, false teeth were fashioned from bone, ivory, copper, seashells, and repurposed human and animal teeth, affixed in the mouth with metal wire. The Ancient Chinese used bamboo pegs as dentures, and in Japan from the 16th century, dentures were often fashioned from wood. It wasn’t until the late 1700s that the first porcelain dentures were created, by French pharmacist Alexis Duchâteau. Today, Japanese teeth makers are prominent within the industry, which Shin believes may be down to greater dexterity thanks to a lifetime of chopstick use. He grabs a hand grinder to demonstrate how the traditional Japanese grip differs from that of those trained in the West.
“There’s so much I love about my work, such as the actual crafting process, but most of all I love that I’m helping ease people’s pain and bringing their smile and their confidence back.”
Though some dentists now make teeth using computer-aided design and manufacturing, most opt to employ highly skilled technicians like Shin, knowing that technology is not quite at the point where it can rival handmade. Plus, says, Shin, it’s the way patients generally prefer it.
From dental stone moulds of patients’ mouths, Shin shows how he goes about building those new teeth. Making a row, he says, is sometimes easier to shape than replacing just a single tooth, though even within a row each tooth is still crafted individually and fixed to its own pin. The stone is dipped with wax to ensure a tight fit of the ceramic crown which goes on top. Shin mixes a selection of pastes – which range from semi-transparent to translucent – to be applied in layers over the crown to mimic the appearance of a real tooth. The ceramic is then placed in a high tech oven, like pottery in a kiln, to be ‘baked’ at 750°C. Each tooth takes around 1-2 days in total, but the process is spread over several weeks. Shin estimates that he produces 20-30 a week. He’s often asked to do more but has capped his client list to ensure consistency of quality. Shin has built his reputation as meticulously as he builds each new molar. He takes pride in his work, and pride in the calls and emails of gratitude that follow. All’s that matters is giving someone back their grin.
I ask if Shin hopes that his children will follow in his footsteps as he did with his dad, but he says they’re still too young for such considerations. Besides, he laments, by the time they come of age, technology will no doubt have finally figured out how to do things as if by hand. And with that, I shake Shin’s hand and leave, as he heads back to his worktop to build another smile.
Tooth Maker Shin Tsuji is on Facebook @shinktsuji
