From the Kiln

Some mornings I open the kiln and I don't know what I'll find.

That's the honest part nobody tells you about Jianzhan. The glaze is made from stone I grind myself, mixed with a little wood ash from the fire. I brush it onto a cup that I threw by hand maybe two hours before. Then I close the door, light the fire, and wait.

The fire decides.

On a good day the glaze breaks into streaks like a hare's fur. On another it dots itself with oil spots, silver against black. Sometimes I get a colour I've never seen, and I have to sit with it a while, because I'll probably never see it again.

Luminya started the way most of my work does — by accident. A friend asked if she could carry one of my cups to her shop. A woman bought it, then wrote to me months later saying the cup had changed how her tea felt. Not the tea. The feeling of holding something that no one else on earth has.

We take small pieces of that glaze and set them in silver, so the ring and the pendant carry the same kiln. No two pieces match, because no two firings match. When you buy one, you're not picking a finish off a rack. You're picking the one that survived.

My work isn't smooth and it won't be identical. The line where the glaze pooled might be a little thick. The cup might wobble the tiniest bit on the table. That's not a flaw to me — that's a record of the fire.

Use the cup long enough and the surface will change. The touch of your hand, the tea, the years — they all get written into it. A factory piece can't do that. It was never alive to begin with.

I don't make many. I don't hurry. When you hold a Luminya piece, you're not holding a product. You're holding a day when the fire was kind.

— The Luminya Studio