STUDIO NOTES: CAT (DIP CERAMICS)
STUDIO NOTES: CAT (DIP CERAMICS)
Caitlyn’s studio always hums with a kind of ancient quiet. It’s not silence, it’s the sound of something becoming. Of soft might and mineral memory, coaxed into form by hands that understand time differently. Watching her spin clay into vessels — mugs, sometimes bowls; I’m reminded of what it means to pour the whole body into a single gesture.
What I find so beautiful about clay is the insistence that your body must be present. You can’t rush a curve. You can’t fake the weight of something that’s meant to hold warmth. Every part of you is in negotiation with earth, water, fire.
There is an incredible strength required in the beginning. The clay resists, it asks for your intention. But then, a softening. A negotiation into tenderness. What begins with force becomes delicacy: a fingertip here, a breath held there. It’s a choreography of knowing when to lead, and when to let go.
This rhythm mirrors how I’ve come to understand scent. Particularly within the world of Fluid Per Fumum, and even more so in the birth of Sai-Ra. There is power in the initial strike; a soft pull toward something more tender. Less defined. The invisible message arrives not all at once, but slowly, like steam rising from a freshly poured cup.
In Cat’s process, there’s a moment I always hold onto: the wrapping. A freshly thrown vessel, still vulnerable, is swaddled like a newborn. Moved gently to the kiln, where it could crack, collapse, or emerge more itself. This is not unlike our fragrances, which go through their own metamorphosis in maceration. They, too, are carried with hope. With the risk of failure. With the grace of possibility.
I see all this; the physicality, the ritual, the delicate brutality—as an echo of what I’m chasing in scent. A charged stillness. The idea that something as intangible as perfume or clay’s memory can carry a message from one soul to another.
This theme, to me, is co-regulation. A shared, unspoken resonance. Between hand and vessel. Skin and air. Scent and self. In a world that often demands immediacy and hardness, this work, ours, is a gentle rebellion. A reminder that sensitivity is not weakness. That transformation can be quiet. That the unseen still speaks.
