The artisan wakes as the morning sun pierces the shuttered window, its light refracted by an ordered queue of Phoenix trees outside. Then the dissonant symphony of the day stirs inside his ears; the cars, the bikes, the shouting, the dogs. A soldier of labour, every limb creaks as the blood rushes to his extremities. So alert is his mind in this state that every morning he is overwhelmed by the sensation, the pure belief, that he has never been asleep. The unmade bed, its covers and pillow folded and depressed in a restless knot, is the only objective proof of his body’s rest. He sighs to himself. Another day. He lurches forward; the tea won’t make itself. He sips from a small glazed cup laced with the intricate patterns of his imagination. The artisan turns the cup skyward into the morning light. As he holds it, he remembers every moment of its making; the motion of the wheel, the infernal heat of the kiln, the meditative painting of the miniature scene. He thinks to himself, ‘When you throw a mound of white clay onto the wheel, you never anticipate the moment of its breaking’. [Daniel Browning]