Throw Away Gems

A new little side product from my ceramics studio: porcelain incense burners.

As Rob cuts tiles for our CLOUD Porcelain Tile orders, there are 3 strips of clay trimmed off from the side of each tile. Over the last year that we've been working at this collection, we've created literally thousands of these strips.

Rob does most of the cutting of these tiles and has long lamented the buckets and buckets of trimmings filling our trash and thought about ways to prevent this waste*. Because he's not only industrious but intensely - and I would say brilliantly - creative, at some idle moment while waiting for something to cool or dry he grabbed one of these and idly started carving.

His idle carvings have turned into incense burners galore! Initially they were very simple basic flat strips but these weren't very interesting nor particularly beautiful. He continued to play around and soon came up with some feather and leaf inspired shapes.

The colors depend on what color tiles he’s cutting and he only makes them while waiting for other parts of the process and always from these throw-away trimmings.

Meanwhile I haven’t been tremendously supportive of his endeavor since it’s created piles and piles of in-process pieces filling up very precious space.

However, recently these began looking really beautiful and unusual and I have to admit that I’ve kind of fallen in love with them which is why I'm showing them to you.

Shop link for Mandalas, Yantras, Incense Burners and Cups (coming soon).

A side note - we have actually since learned how to reclaim scrap clay so no longer have waste, but of course we still pull some aside for carving incense burners!

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