Categories
One shop, several craft traditions. A category opens only when a named maker, real objects and their documents are in hand.
Porcelain
Snow within the kiln fire
Jingdezhen, Jiangxi, China
17 pieces listed
Jade and stone
A thousand years of seal script in the palm
Shoushan village, Jin'an district, Fuzhou, Fujian, China
No pieces listed yet
Bamboo and rattan
The woven everyday
Qingshen (Sichuan) and Shengzhou (Zhejiang), China; Phu Vinh, Hanoi, Vietnam
No pieces listed yet
Lacquer
Lacquer turned from vessel into painting
Fuzhou, Yangzhou and Beijing, China; Ha Thai and Chuyen My, Vietnam
No pieces listed yet
Pearl
Characters cut within a grain of rice
Shanxiahu, Zhuji, Zhejiang; Beihai, Guangxi; and the Yang family micro-carving tradition, Anhui, China
No pieces listed yet
Tibetan silver metalwork
Silver drawn, not cast
Shigatse and Nagarze county (Shannan), Tibet, China; Himalayan workshops in Nepal as comparison
No pieces listed yet
Thangka
A painting built from mineral light
Lhasa, Shigatse and Chamdo, Tibet; Rebgong (Tongren), Qinghai; Kathmandu, Nepal as comparison
No pieces listed yet
How a category is admitted
Every category and every maker is scored against seven dimensions before a single piece is listed. The two heaviest dimensions are logistics and margin: for fragile objects made by hand, those are the real constraints, not the story.
| Dimension | Weight | What it tests |
|---|---|---|
| D1 · Category fit | 15 | Is the work genuinely non-standard, hand-made and rooted in a living craft tradition, or is it homogeneous? |
| D2 · Narrative and provenance | 20 | Can the maker, the place and the evidence be verified, and can they be understood outside China? |
| D3 · Logistics and fulfilment | 20 | Weight, volume, fragility, breakage and return cost. Large or fragile forms are excluded rather than over-packed. |
| D4 · Unit price and margin | 15 | Can one piece carry the cost of cross-border delivery and still leave a defensible margin? |
| D5 · Capacity and zero-stock fit | 10 | Is made-to-order or consignment workable, and can the maker sustain a small annual output? |
| D6 · Compliance and intellectual property | 10 | Material testing, export documentation, image rights and the accuracy of every public claim. |
| D7 · Series and audience extension | 10 | Can a body of work develop over time without turning into volume production? |
Total 100. The two heaviest dimensions, logistics and margin, account for 35 points between them.
These dimensions assess whether a craft belongs here. They are not sales targets: this shop does not optimise for unit volume or turnover, and a piece is never listed to fill a shelf.
Why four categories have no pieces
No photograph, no measurement, no certificate: no listing. Inventing objects for a category that is still being assessed would make every other claim on this site harder to believe.
Each preparing category publishes its craft, its place of origin and the conditions a piece must meet before it can appear. Enquiries are welcome while that work continues.