Made by hand

Patience, the most important ingredient.

Every vessel is made by hand in our studio in Johannesburg. Porcelain cannot be hurried. Between every touch of the maker's hands, the clay asks for time.

Six days, per vessel

Nothing here is rushed.

Day 1 Casting Porcelain slip is poured into the plaster mould, where the vessel takes its form and thickness.
Day 2 to 3 Drying Released from the mould, the vessel rests two full days and gives up its moisture slowly.
Day 4 Fettling Every seam is refined by hand, then the vessel dries once more before the kiln.
Day 5 Firing Fired to 1220 °C, then left a full day to cool inside the kiln.
Day 6 Polishing 6Days in the makingNature sets the pace. Sanded, waxed, checked and packed. No two alike.
The material 20 L Buckets, shipped from Mossel Bay

The slip.

Our porcelain slip is formulated in Mossel Bay by the people who make porcelain gin bottles, and shipped to Johannesburg in twenty litre buckets. It is not an off-the-shelf clay body. It was mixed for vessels that have to hold liquid and hold a thread.

Slip that fails before firing goes back into the bucket and becomes the next vessel. Nothing is thrown away.

The tooling 30 Castings, then the mould is retired

The moulds.

Each plaster mould takes a day to cast and a week to dry. Its first three vessels are sacrificed while the plaster learns the form. After thirty castings the mould is retired and a new one is made by hand.

The mould is consumable. The vessel is not.

The timing 1 to 40 Minutes in the mould

One minute, or forty.

Timing is the whole trick. A Christmas bauble holds slip for one minute. A candle vessel holds it for forty. A minute either way changes the wall thickness, and the wall thickness changes everything.

There is no timer that can decide it for you. Someone has to stand there and know.

Tolerance 0.5 mm Half a millimetre. Porcelain shrinks in the kiln. Every form is drawn so that it shrinks to within half a millimetre, because a perfume pump and a dispenser thread do not negotiate. That tolerance is why our vessels take pumps at all.
The firing 1220 °C Fired once, to cone 6. Almost everything is single-fired. One firing rather than two, which uses less energy and asks more of the maker. At that temperature the porcelain vitrifies: it becomes glass-hard the whole way through, and in white it turns translucent when you hold it to the light.
The kilns Atlas, Gaia, Ceres Where the maghic happens Atlas came first and holds twelve dispensers. Gaia and Ceres hold seventy-five dispensers each, or a hundred and twenty perfume bottles. We have fired more batches than we have counted. That is the difference between a hobby and a workshop.

The fragrance

Composed in the same building.

Neil is self-taught and works with more than eighty raw materials. A single fragrance goes through anywhere from six to twenty versions before he signs it off. Every Eau de Parfum is composed at twenty percent concentration, macerated for two weeks in aluminium, and filled one bottle at a time.

80+Raw materials on the bench
6 to 20Versions before a scent is signed off
20%Concentration, Eau de Parfum
2Weeks macerating in aluminium

The vessel is not the packaging. It is the product.

When the fragrance runs low, refill it.

See the collection