Cups whose colour is in the clay rather than on it — stacked, rolled and sliced from coloured slabs by an Indonesian potter who counts two months per cup, and sells them in small batches.

Nerikomi is a Japanese technique for patterning clay before it is ever shaped: coloured clays are stacked into a block, rolled, and sliced, and the slices become the walls of the pot. Nabila Nareswari’s own description on her site says why that matters — the pattern is “structural rather than painted on,” which lets a potter put detailed images or complex repeats on both sides of a slab. On her Iris cups the result is a mottle of soft pink, blue, ochre and grey dots that runs right through the wall, over the rim and down the inside, and none of it is glaze.

The shop listing for the small Iris cup reads like a maker’s specification rather than a catalogue: about 7.5 cm across and 8 cm tall, a comfortable 220 ml; stoneware vitrified at 1230°C; the inside glazed transparent, the outside left unglazed and sealed with a silicon-dioxide sealer to make it stainproof and waterproof; hand wash with soap, oven fine, microwave not advised. Each piece is sold as A grade or, a little cheaper, B grade with a small rim crack. And a line that follows from the method: because she recycles her coloured clay, some colours cannot be replicated and may be unique to a single piece.

She is candid about the cost of the technique. “No other work of mine takes as much patience as these lovely mugs and cups do,” she wrote of the Iris series. “There isn’t really a shortcut to having them done quicker, you just have to do one thing after another, after another, and before you know it, it’s there in your hands! Albeit two months later.”

Which is the honest caveat about buying one: timing. The 2026 Iris cups and mugs were listed on 6 September and every size was sold out before Kottke found them two weeks later. A pre-order for the December batch of Iris mugs opened on 13 September at 3,975,000 rupiah, roughly $245 at today’s rate; a set of earlier nerikomi mugs from last December — Lana, Rana, Simon — is in stock at 2,850,000 rupiah, about $175, and a few of her Dana cups and Daria boxes and trays are available too. Prices are in Indonesian rupiah and the work ships from Indonesia, so check the shipping line before you fall for one.