Unveiling Artistry: Meet ceramist, Ginny Yang of Taiwan

We almost never met Ginny Yang, the young, second-generation ceramicist based in Hsinchu. We had an appointment with her parents in a small village called Gongguan outside Miaoli. The elder Hakka couple (some of whose pieces are slated for later release) were very gracious and hospitable, and when we began to make our selections, our eyes caught a stout pot of commendable even roundness, perfect size, with a bulbous lid and harmonious shape: a beautiful pinkish-yellow pear-shape variation with little flecks. They told us, with some amusement, this was not their piece at all—but their daughter’s. After our purchase, we reached out to Ginny and though our itinerary was tight, we managed to bookend a visit to her studio. 

Yang combines a fresh spirit of experimentation and ingenuity with the wood-firing legacy of her parents. She is the juncture of many realities of the craft, including that she works tirelessly to travel and do small artisan markets across the country to sell her pieces hand-to-hand. Like most young people, her digital footprint is also an essential part of reaching her audience. Gongguan was once a center of of the ceramic industry in the 1940s—the good clay from the surrounding hills drawing quarries and ceramicists alike—but is now a very quiet village in the Miaoli region.

“Eat well, drink tea well, live well,” - Ginny Yang.

She teaches ceramics classes to the general public in Hsinchu. But living well to Yang means also taking time off from her work, resting, and self care, “I often hear people talking about tradition and heritage, that we should retain the traditional skills—but for my family heritage mean togetherness.” She says

“it is the giving and the inheritance of love—free of obligation or condition. In life, we come from love and end in love.”

There is a lithe deftness to her work and a beautiful sabi. Though she may have an admittedly artistic bent, and an elemental attraction to woodfire kilns, she insists on the ultimate functionality of each of her pieces and hopes that they will bring joy through their everyday use. Through each of her pieces there is a sincerity and meticulousness, an intentionality, that can be felt when you enjoy tea in them. They enhance our presence and invite us to contemplate the extraordinary beauty in simple, elemental things. The night we stopped by her cozy shop on the outskirts of Hsinchu, she helped us select some pieces to take home over cookies and tea. This first selection we’re offering is a deliberate set meant to be enjoyed together—so we dared not separate the individual pieces. 

  
 
Her works evoke the humble elegance inherent in classical tea vessels and shun excessive ornamentation, and yet they are possessed of delightful and endearing forms. In her panoply of finishes we find seafoam bubbling in coral reefs, cotton candy clouds, snow falling on black tors at night. To Ginny, clay is simply the medium from which unique works emerge and her ethos is that “Between two hands there is nothing but space, but it is a space as big as the universe.” ✮

Shop her 'Lilith" tea set. Only one set is available.