If you scroll through TikTok or Instagram today, you’ll likely stumble across a short video that makes you stop. A plain colored pencil spins on a lathe. A few seconds later, the pencil has transformed into a delicate wine glass, a chain link, or a springy spiral that stretches and compresses without breaking. The artist behind this viral wave is Suguru Ito, known online as Suu Worx Woodturner.
Ito doesn’t come from an art school background. For 17 years, he worked as a Japanese cuisine and sushi chef. Precision, timing, and presentation defined his daily life. He spent several years abroad teaching cooking before returning to Tokyo to prepare for his own restaurant. During that time, a home renovation project led him to discover woodworking equipment. The lathe changed everything.
He started simply, making bowls and vases. He posted small projects online. But somewhere between cooking knives and wood chisels, the two disciplines blended. Food taught him discipline and an eye for functional beauty. Woodturning gave him a new stage. He credits inspiration from Kitaoji Rosanjin, a 20th-century ceramicist, calligrapher, and restaurateur famous for marrying culinary and artistic craft.
In 2025, Ito found his signature. He began experimenting with pencils. Regular colored pencils became raw material, not just tools. His series, “Pencil Play,” redefined what people thought a lathe could do. He shaped casings into goblets smaller than your fingertip, or spirals that behave like tiny springs. In one of his most watched TikTok clips, he carves a single blue pencil into a stretching coil while keeping the graphite intact.
“Pencil sharpening—making all sorts of things,” he wrote in May on X, attaching a video that pulled in thousands of reactions and millions of views. Fans reposted his work widely. One July video repost alone reached more than 2 million views. On TikTok, his clips rack up crowds of viewers watching patiently carved pencils take shape in minutes.
Ito’s Instagram posts track his steady shift in style. Scroll back to 2022 and you’ll see larger work: lacquered bowls, vases, and goblets. These pieces show careful design but follow tradition. By early 2025, his feed begins focusing almost entirely on pencils. Now he has more than 36,000 followers who wait for the next pencil reveal.
His drawings with wood are not simple tricks. Carving a pencil on a lathe requires precision at a microscopic level. One wrong turn and the pencil snaps, graphite crumbles, and the design is lost. Yet his videos carry an ease, as if the pencil always meant to become that way. This marriage of danger and delicacy keeps people watching until the final reveal.
What sets Ito apart isn’t only the scale of his work—it’s the fact that his sculptures keep the graphite core intact. To an ordinary eye, the pencil remains usable. But in his hands, it also becomes a miniature piece of art. He reminds you how much can be drawn from the most basic of tools.
Art communities online have called him “exceptional.” Viewers often point out that his skill doesn’t just showcase patience but transforms how you see an everyday object. “Impressive pencil carving,” one fan wrote in July, reposting his work. Another commented that his pencil wine glass was “something only he could think to make.”
Ito hasn’t abandoned bigger projects. His feed still features bowls, goblets, and vases. In March, he jokingly shared images of his “BIGGEST goblets,” as if to contrast his large-scale work with his new obsession with tiny carvings. But it’s the pencils that made him a global name.
He keeps a modest online presence. His posts are sporadic, and he avoids overexposure, but he interacts with other woodworkers. His replies show genuine interest in techniques that differ from his own. That sense of community makes him approachable, even as his fame grows.
Ito’s timing fits with a broader trend on social media. Micro-art is booming, and platforms reward creators who take everyday objects and twist them into something uncanny. Pencil art feels timeless and playful at once, and Ito’s videos are short enough to thrive in the fast-scrolling world of TikTok and Instagram.
What comes next for him is unclear. Some critics believe exhibits are around the corner. Others think collaborations could merge his culinary past with his current art. That overlap seems natural—his pencil goblets often echo the shapes of wine glasses or delicate serving dishes. His eye for food never really left. It evolved into sculpture.
For now, his audience waits for the next pencil. His content in April and May revolved almost entirely around new carvings: spirals that twist like toys, wine glasses small enough to fit on a fingernail, chains linked from a single pencil body. He laughs at his own creations, calling them things “probably only I’m doing.”
If you’ve scrolled past his videos, you know why people keep watching. Ito teaches you to see a simple tool differently. He shows that beauty doesn’t always come from rare materials or grand displays. Sometimes it comes from a pencil spinning on a lathe. And if the graphite survives intact, you might even use the art to sketch your next idea.
Suguru Ito
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