Voulkos was also influenced by Zen Buddhism after a 1952 encounter with Japanese potter Shoji Hamada. Hamada encouraged Voulkos to embrace a Zen approach to ceramics based not only upon technical proficiency but also upon a mental and spiritual union between creator and art object. Voulkos later cited Hamada's statement that it "took him ten years to learn the potter's wheel and another ten years to forget it"—an insight that inspired Voulkos' early attempts to fully form a teapot in two minutes.